Nickolas Butler

“Corn might be the epidemic that kills us, but I've always loved staring at a big field of it, perfectly planted.”

— Nickolas Butler

“Buttery nipples,” I said, smiling broadly. “Buttery nipples.”

— Nickolas Butler

“and read the books that always seem to Jenga up on her bedside table without her managing to actually read them”

— Nickolas Butler

“It is especially on such nights that a person should not be left alone.”

— Nickolas Butler

“Kids keep you young...But Christ, they make you feel old, too.”

— Nickolas Butler

“something desperate, something ecstatic, some transference of, yes, energy”

— Nickolas Butler

“Nothing patronizing, nothing sexist--just a slightly outdated politeness, and the general regard it might suggest.”

— Nickolas Butler

“Sometimes that is what forgiveness is anyway, a deep sigh”

— Nickolas Butler

“It was the first time in her life that she considered clothing as a method of camoflaging our scars, the traumas of…

— Nickolas Butler

“Goddamn golf shirts and gym memberships and fake muscles and tans and cell phones and new cars. Trevor didn't care about any…

— Nickolas Butler

“I've known cowards and I've known heroes," he says. "The heroes were always ruled by their hearts; the cowards by their brains.…

— Nickolas Butler

“Winter in Wisconsin is the ideal time to avoid someone because our garments grow ever larger, ever thicker, and we go about…

— Nickolas Butler

“her pace quickens, like a girl visiting a beloved grandparent or uncle. How right he was. She is suddenly aware of her…

— Nickolas Butler

“In all my travels, only in the Midwest would someone spend their money in a place they hate simply because they feel…

— Nickolas Butler

“Politics? Check out a book on thermodynamics. All the rules apply. What you're talking about is essentially energy, or the absence of…

— Nickolas Butler

“The way he loved was almost like a vise, a weight; at times she felt it verged on codependence--that his identity, his…

— Nickolas Butler

“The world is full of bad men, but if you are prepared, and if you are STRONG, then you cannot be taken…

— Nickolas Butler

“The world, it seems, does not much care anymore if you are an Eagle Scout, or even a Tenderfoot. It's all about…

— Nickolas Butler

“It feels like she's having some very sophisticated sleepover with her spiritual sensei or guru. She has always avoided the term LIFE…

— Nickolas Butler

“there seems an atmosphere everywhere these days in America, a malevolent vibration in the air, every citizen so quick to righteous rage,…

— Nickolas Butler

“Someone possessed with hunger, with a thought, with a craving, with a perversion, someone who needs their drug, someone who comes to…

— Nickolas Butler

“America, I think, is about poor people playing music and poor people sharing food and poor people dancing, even when everything else…

— Nickolas Butler

“He was righteous. He had a sense of duty, of what was right and wrong in the world, and I don't mean…

— Nickolas Butler

“The world is composed of people who are hungry, and those who are not hungry. It goes back to energy, to entropy.…

— Nickolas Butler

“Sing like you've got no audience, sing like you don't know what a critic is, sing about your hometown, sing about your…

— Nickolas Butler

“Beth changed her ensemble five times that morning, switching out her shoes, her necklaces, her earrings. I understood. Had I owned more…

— Nickolas Butler

“This is the air of someone manning a backwater security checkpoint, a jaded receptionist, a disgruntled cashier or tollbooth operator--their power at…

— Nickolas Butler

“He is a particular kind of Wisconsinite, she understands. The world is a bullet train that has passed him by so quickly,…

— Nickolas Butler