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Quote by Charles Martin

“Everything in me wanted to go home. To fall on my dad, tell him about Jimmy, and tell him 'I'm sorry.' But there was another part of me that would not let me do that. And that part needed to make something of the mess that was me. To walk home with something more than scars and empty hands. To be something other than a failure. I was caught in the middle of that tug-of-war.”

Quote by Charles Martin

Work

Long Way Gone

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Author

Charles Martin

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“But the limp tent sputtering to life transfixes Thaddeus. It morphs and undulates like a lava flow. Forms rise in the fabric only to collapse as the gas reaches toward equilibrium. "It's just the wind," Cheryl says, but he ignores her. His home is turmoil. Right now poison pours over Cheryl's clothes and into Stevie's old room. Next will be the garage, or would that have been first? Ultimately, the order matters little to him. Gas will eventually coil around everything like a cat settling down for a nap: his law books in the attic, the photograph in the family room of Stevie leaning over the rail at Niagara Falls pretending to slip, the Hawaiian leis from a family vacation he can't quite remember, entire drawers full of odd knickknacks and fading memorabilia that attest to a life well lived, tangible proof of memories made even if the memories themselves rise more sluggishly and infrequently than they used to—all of it, ultimately, choking on gas. But how many of the termites?”