Top 60 S.A. Cosby Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Tears ran from his eyes and stung his cheeks. Tears for his son. Tears for his wife. Tears for the little girl they had to raise. Tears for who they were and what they all had lost. Each drop felt like it was slicing his face open like a razorblade.”

— S.A. Cosby

2. “Life sends us down some strange roads on our way to our destiny.”

— S.A. Cosby

3. “Ike didn’t want to be a king. A king never sleeps. He ends up like Slice. Staring at everyone and anticipating how they might try to come for his crown.”

— S.A. Cosby

4. “He so crooked they gonna have to screw him into the ground when he dies,” Boonie.”

— S.A. Cosby

5. “It’s easier to keep your head in the sand than it is to try and see things from somebody else’s point of view. There’s a reason why they say ignorance is bliss.”

— S.A. Cosby

6. “Sometimes grief is love unexpressed. Other times it’s regret made flesh.”

— S.A. Cosby

7. “I ain’t gonna lie and say I get you, because I don’t. I can’t even pretend I know what it must be like to be... you. But if all this has taught me one thing, it’s that it ain’t about me and what I get. It’s about letting people be who they are. And being who you are shouldn’t be a death sentence.”

— S.A. Cosby

8. “This is who I am. I can’t change. I don’t want to, really. But for once I’m gonna put this devil inside me to good use.”

— S.A. Cosby

9. “It’s like that story. The wolf gets to the turnip patch at six in the morning. The rabbit been there and gone,” Ike said. “We the rabbits, in that story, right?” Buddy Lee said. “Yeah, but we gonna eat them like we’re the wolves,” Ike said.”

— S.A. Cosby

10. “The truth is no one can be fully protected. Safety is an illusion. There is no safety. Just downtime between tragedies.”

— S.A. Cosby

11. “It occurred to Buddy Lee that anything could be a weapon if you were dedicated enough. Even love. Especially love.”

— S.A. Cosby

12. “Progress had left this part of town behind. It was abandoned just like the store. A blacktop wasteland haunted by the phantoms of the past.”

— S.A. Cosby

13. “A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he was meant to be. FRANK A. CLARK.”

— S.A. Cosby

14. “Darlene’s a good woman, but she could burn water,” Gilby said.”

— S.A. Cosby

15. “The thing about loving someone was that they knew all your pressure points. They knew all the spots that were open and raw. You let them into your heart and they cased the place.”

— S.A. Cosby

16. “Preston thought capitalism was great if people who looked like you were the ones sitting in the Capitol. For everyone else, well, sometimes it was like trying to climb a greased pole in mittens.”

— S.A. Cosby

17. “Ike knew what gave Buddy Lee’s eyes that murderous sheen. It was the rage coursing through his veins. A poison that killed off certain parts of yourself. The parts that made you weak. It was coursing through Ike’s veins, too. It was powerful but deadly. It made you determined but reckless. It gave you an edge that could turn against you and slit your own throat.”

— S.A. Cosby

18. “But time was a river made of quicksilver. It slipped through his grasp even as it enveloped him. Twenty became forty. Winter became spring, and before he knew it he was an old man burying his son and wondering where in the hell that river had taken him.”

— S.A. Cosby

19. “The South doesn’t change. You can try to hide the past, but it comes back in ways worse than the way it was before. Terrible ways.”

— S.A. Cosby

20. “It’s like my Daddy used to say. While they picking apples, I’m planting seeds.”

— S.A. Cosby

21. “We all choose to be skeptics when the truth is inconvenient.”

— S.A. Cosby

22. “Terrible people can do good things sometimes. But they like doing the terrible things more. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Titus said.”

— S.A. Cosby

23. “When the people you love are gone, it’s the things they’ve touched that keep them alive in your mind.”

— S.A. Cosby

24. “I go looking I might find them. And if I find them, I’ll kill them,” he said. The words came out plain and without much inflection. She’d known him since he was fifteen and she was thirteen. Mya knew he wasn’t exaggerating. Ike waited for her to say he couldn’t do that. He stood there waiting for her to say let the cops handle it. He waited and waited.”

— S.A. Cosby

25. “But if all this has taught me one thing, it’s that it ain’t about me and what I get. It’s about letting people be who they are. And being who you are shouldn’t be a goddamn death sentence.”

— S.A. Cosby

26. “But comfortable is to art what sugar is to tea. Too much and you ruin it.”

— S.A. Cosby

27. “Waiting for the world to shed tears for your pain was like waiting for a statue to speak. So you filed the reports, you answered the emails. You carried on as best you could. And if you were like Titus, if you wore a badge on your chest, you promised you’d do all you could to find the Last Wolf and peel off his mask. Show the world the face of the monster.”

— S.A. Cosby

28. “All I do know is violence begets more violence and all violence is a confession of pain. Hurt people tend to hurt people.”

— S.A. Cosby

29. “Titus didn’t have the heart to tell Darlene that no one told anyone all their secrets. Even the people we loved kept pieces of themselves hidden away from the light.”

— S.A. Cosby

30. “My Daddy never lied about who or what he was. He owned it. I was the one who put him on a pedestal. He never climbed up there. But me? I lied all the time. I lied to you. I lied to myself. I thought I could be an outlaw part of the time and the rest of the time be a daddy and a husband. That was the lie. Truth is I’m an outlaw all.”

— S.A. Cosby

31. “When he stepped off the porch, he could feel the sun beating down on him like he owed it money.”

— S.A. Cosby

32. “The only person who knew your weak spots better than the woman who raised you was the woman who shared your bed.”

— S.A. Cosby

33. “These leaves fell toward the ground like strands of hair that were the crown of glory for some eldritch elder god.”

— S.A. Cosby

34. “A man once told me we can’t change the past but we can decide what happens next.”

— S.A. Cosby

35. “There was a chasm everyone had to traverse at one time or another called failure. Fear was the bridge that carried you over that crevasse.”

— S.A. Cosby

36. “When the people you love are gone, it’s the things they’ve touched that keep them alive in your mind. A picture, a shirt, a poem, a pair of baby shoes. They become anchors that help you keep their memory from drifting away.”

— S.A. Cosby

37. “Boonie’s sitting on ten rolls of platinum for you.”

— S.A. Cosby

38. “Waiting for the world to shed tears for your pain was like waiting for a statue to speak.”

— S.A. Cosby

39. “It was like they traded a secular addiction for a sanctified one.”

— S.A. Cosby

40. “Davy, if your cousin ain’t a racist, he is mighty goddamn comfortable with being around racists. That’s a distinction without a difference.”

— S.A. Cosby

41. “Yet it was those shards, the pieces of her heart, that cut into his own broken covenant of faith and made those words bleed from his mouth.”

— S.A. Cosby

42. “The needle on the temperature gauge was so far in the red, it needed to file for bankruptcy.”

— S.A. Cosby

43. “Scott was the type of man who complained about the world being too sensitive these days without ever acknowledging the irony of his own fragility or privilege.”

— S.A. Cosby

44. “That was the thing about violence. When you went looking for it you definitely were going to find it. It just wouldn’t be at a time of your own choosing. It jumped up and splattered your nice new boots before you were really ready.”

— S.A. Cosby

45. “Gerald ain’t the person you told yourself he was. That’s a hard lesson, but it ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, Tangerine. We all learn that lesson or we teach it to somebody.”

— S.A. Cosby

46. “Most of it is just being respectful of people and accepting them for who they are.”

— S.A. Cosby

47. “Even the people we loved kept pieces of themselves hidden away from the light.”

— S.A. Cosby

48. “He knew he’d be poor company for Darlene if she did come over. He could be surly when he was tired. He would take this skirmish to avoid a full-blown argument. That was the nature of long-term relationships. Dozens upon dozens of tactical decisions and one-sided negotiations to keep the peace, or some facsimile thereof.”

— S.A. Cosby

49. “What God would allow such a curse to befall his people? No one will say it aloud, but many, many congregants are having a crisis of the soul. Many are putting their faith in shotgun shells and .357s, not the carpenter from Galilee.”

— S.A. Cosby

50. “Chopping up your first body is disgusting. Your second is tiresome. When you’re doing your fifteenth, it’s all muscle memory.”

— S.A. Cosby