Winter’s Bone

by

Daniel Woodrell

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Chapter 1 Quotes

“Never ask for what ought to be offered.”

Related Characters: Ree Dolly (speaker), Harold Dolly
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Ree’s grand hope was that these boys would not be dead to wonder by age twelve, dulled to life, empty of kindness, boiling with mean. So many Dolly kids were that way, ruined before they had chin hair, groomed to live outside square law and abide by the remorseless blood-soaked commandments that governed lives outside square law…The rough Dollys were scornful of town law and town ways, clinging to their own.

Related Characters: Ree Dolly, Sonny Dolly, Harold Dolly
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Ree needed often to inject herself with pleasant sounds, stab those sounds past the constant screeching, squalling hubbub regular life raised inside her spirit, poke the soothing sounds past that racket and down deep where her jittering soul paced on a stone slab in a gray room, agitated and endlessly provoked but yearning to hear something that might bring a moment’s rest.

Related Characters: Ree Dolly
Related Symbols: Ree’s Tapes
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:

Ree nearly fell but would not let it happen in front of the law. She heard thunder clapping between her ears and Beelzebub scratchin’ a fiddle. The boys and her and mom would be dogs in the field without this house. They would be dogs in the field with Beelzebub scratchin’ out tunes and the boys’d have a hard hard shove toward unrelenting meanness and the roasting shed and she’d be stuck along side them ‘til steel doors clanged shut and the flames rose. She’d never have her own concerns.

Related Characters: Ree Dolly, Sonny Dolly, Harold Dolly, Connie Dolly, Jessup Dolly, Deputy Baskin
Page Number: 15
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“Didn’t want you-all to fear we’d forgot you for good.”

Related Characters: Sonya (speaker), Ree Dolly, Sonny Dolly, Harold Dolly, Connie Dolly
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“Don’t you, nor nobody else, neither, ever go down around Hawkfall askin’ them people shit about stuff they ain’t offerin’ to talk about. That’s a real good way to end up et by hogs, or wishin’ you was… Our relations get watered kinda thin between this valley here and Hawkfall.”

Related Characters: Uncle Teardrop (speaker), Ree Dolly
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“Settin’ out food’ll draw em close—that’s likely how they’ll come too close and get shot, Harold. Don’t set no goddam food out. It looks like you’re doin’ nice, but you don’t. You’re just bringin’ ‘em into range, is all.”

Related Characters: Ree Dolly (speaker), Sonny Dolly, Harold Dolly
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:

“He cooks crank.”
“Honey, They all do now. You don’t even need to say it out loud.”

Related Characters: Ree Dolly (speaker), Megan (speaker), Jessup Dolly, Little Arthur
Related Symbols: Crystal Meth / Crank
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:

“It’s been this way with our people forever, goddam it. For-fuckin’-ever. You go see Thump. Go up there’n knock gentle on his door, and wait.”

Related Characters: Megan (speaker), Ree Dolly, Thump Milton
Page Number: 57
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

“Ma’am, I got a real bad need to talk with Thump Milton…I need to, I really, really need to, ma’am. Please—I am a Dolly! Some of our blood at least is the same. That’s s’posed to mean somethin’—ain’t that what is always said?”

Related Characters: Ree Dolly (speaker), Merab, Thump Milton
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:

To have but a few male names in use was a tactic held over from the olden knacker ways…Let any sheriff or similar nabob try to keep official accounts on the Dolly men when so many were named Milton, Haslam, Arthur or Jessup… Jessups, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the beaten Dolly path, live and die in keeping with those bloodline customs fiercest held.

Related Characters: Ree Dolly, Sonny Dolly, Harold Dolly, Jessup Dolly, Uncle Teardrop, Thump Milton
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“You son of a bitch. You go straight to hell’n fry in your own lard. Sonny’n Harold’ll die livin’ in a fuckin’ cave with me’n Mom before they’ll ever spend a single fuckin’ night with you. Goddam you, Blond Milton, you must think I’m a stupid idiot or somethin’—there’s horseweed standin’ chin-high inside that place!”

Related Characters: Ree Dolly (speaker), Sonny Dolly, Harold Dolly, Connie Dolly, Blond Milton
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

“Somethin’ real wrong was goin’ on, and since then I’ve gone over it and over it in my head and think I finally get why he didn’t even nod my way. He was protectin’ me, see, by ignorin’ me. That’s when I understood your dad had loved me. I understood it from how he’d looked away.”

Related Characters: April (speaker), Ree Dolly, Jessup Dolly
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“Mom, I’m goin’ to need you to help. There’s things happenin’ that I don’t know what to do about. Mom? Look at me, Mom. Mom?” Ree waited kneeling for several minutes, kneeling as raised hopes fell to modest hopes, slight hopes, vague hopes, kneeling until any hope at all withered to none…She released Mom, stood and walked away into the shadows.

Related Characters: Ree Dolly (speaker), Connie Dolly
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

Ree pushed a mulish shopping cart in the Bawbee Store…The wheels were splayed like walleyes, so the cart would not easily go where it looked to be aimed bust screeched off-line in half-moon spins toward one side of the aisle, then the other.

Related Characters: Ree Dolly
Page Number: 122
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

“I got two little brothers who can’t feed theirselves…My mom is sick and she is always goin’ to be sick. Pretty soon the laws’re takin’ our house away n’throwin’ us out…to live in the fields…like fuckin’ dogs. The only hope I got to keep our house is I gotta prove Dad’s dead. Whoever killed him, I don’t need to know that. I don’t never need to know that. If Dad did wrong, Dad has paid. But I can’t forever carry…them boys’n Mom…not…without that house to help.”

Related Characters: Ree Dolly (speaker), Sonny Dolly, Harold Dolly, Connie Dolly, Thump Milton
Page Number: 134
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“You own me now. Understand? You purty much own me now, girl. You do wrong, it’s on me. You do big wrong’n it’s me that’ll pay big.”

Related Characters: Uncle Teardrop (speaker), Ree Dolly
Page Number: 140
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

This was how sudden things happened that haunted forever.

Related Characters: Ree Dolly (speaker), Uncle Teardrop
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 34 Quotes

“We’ll carry you to your daddy’s bones, child. We know the place.”

Related Characters: Merab (speaker), Ree Dolly, Jessup Dolly
Related Symbols: Jessup’s Hands
Page Number: 180
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

Sonny said,“What’ll we do with all that money? Huh? What’s the first thing we’ll get?”
…Ree stood and stretched. Twilight dimmed the snow, but icicles overhead held that gleam. “Wheels.”

Related Characters: Ree Dolly (speaker), Sonny Dolly (speaker), Harold Dolly, Connie Dolly
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:
No matches.