Poe Ballantine Quotes

Chadron had a water tower, grain elevators, a tanning salon, a video rental store, a small liberal arts college, a Hardee’s, a stoplight, and a curling yellow sign in the pet store window that read, ‘Hamsters and Tarantulas Featured Today.’

– Poe Ballantine

I studied a truckload of true crime, praying for illumination, but most true crime relies on luridness and voyeurism for effect.

– Poe Ballantine

There’s good money in true crime, I’m told, and plenty of it lying around, but it’s a devil of an art form.

– Poe Ballantine

I have learned that I am not built for conflict or controversy. I have also learned that, in all my life, I have never chosen a story. The story has always chosen me.

– Poe Ballantine

Western Nebraska is the only place in all my travels where I have seen the dust blowing and the rain falling at the same time.

– Poe Ballantine

Because I’ve lived a risky and unconventional life, I don’t often struggle for subjects to write about.

– Poe Ballantine

I’m that sensitive, honest guy who likes people, wants to know why, and who puzzles everyone by continually putting himself in harm’s way.

– Poe Ballantine

‘Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere’ took me six years to write.

– Poe Ballantine

Most people would live in an outhouse in Bangladesh before they would voluntarily move to Nebraska.

– Poe Ballantine

One evening, after my wife and son had gone out for a walk, I decided to have a talk with my neighbor, who I believe was murdered. I had gotten to know and admire him by listening to people talk about him. He seemed a wonderful person with much to give.

– Poe Ballantine

I’m compared to Kerouac, I suppose, because he traveled and rejected middle-class values, but the similarities end there.

– Poe Ballantine

I first came across Chadron, Nebraska, by accident in 1994.

– Poe Ballantine

All my life, I never realized you could have a conversation with a ghost.

– Poe Ballantine