Sam Tallent

“Billy Ray knew scary men and they didn’t wear visors. This man had never been in a fight in his life. Billy Ray could feel it, it was like a smell: the bravery of ignorance. This man had never been dominated by another. He’d never known the crude intimacy of violence, never felt the fear of laying on his back wondering if the boot would come to his temple or his throat. He was weak, of a generation of false vipers.”
― Sam Tallent, Running the Light

“There is a version of us inside of our minds that does not correspond to our actuality, an idea of who we are that is unaffected by time or reality. Then, one day, you are confronted by the person you really are, the you you have become, the one who exists in the world, the one that breathes and shits and screams. And you realize: the people we think we are may never have existed. You were an idea, steam or smoke or wax. You destroyed the man you remember and in his place is you. You have become a stranger to yourself. You have become an impostor in your own skin.”
― Sam Tallent, Running the Light