I decided that many of Bear’s stories and comments shared a general drift. They advised against fearing all of creation. But not because it is always benign, for it is not. It will, with certainty, consume us all. We are made to be destroyed. We are kindling for the fire, and our lives will stand as naught against the onrush of time. Bear’s position, if I understood it, was that refusal to fear these general terms of existence is an honorable act of defiance.
Still, Luce held firm to the belief that quiet and solitude were good for you, offering peace, or at least hope for peace.
I wonder what people talk about who’ve destroyed their lives with addictions other than books and politics and money and war.
He said, I’ve been coming for you on a hard road. I’m never letting you go. Never.
So, standing here looking at you, all grown up, the question I ask is simple. In the long run, how different is a goddam hot dog from a Vienna sausage?
His best talent had yet to be determined, unless you counted unrealized potential.
Among themselves, they had figured out how to go about marriage so as to accomplish the least damage. t The husbands lived two hours away...
The main thing, Ruby said, was not to get ahead of yourself. Go at a rhythm that could be sustained on and on. Do just as much as you could do and still be able to get up and do again tomorrow. No more, and no less.
Most of the travel was purposeless, carried out in exactly the desperate spirit of fleeing from pursuers. It was romantic, in a certain sense. Especially if you’re not the one doing it.
Children rediscover their parents wisdom when they finally become adults themselves.
In her heart, though, she wondered, Is anything remembered forever?
And they did what lovers often do when they think the future stretches out endless before them as bright as on the noon of creation day: they talked ceaselessly of the past, as if each must be caught up on the other’s previous doings before they can move forward paired.
V has finally learned that sitting calm within herself and waiting is often the best choice. And even when it’s not, those around you become uncomfortable because they think you are wise.
The instant passed so fast, and when that happens, it goes for good and all you have is a slow lifetime to speculate on revisions. Except time flows one way and drags us with it no matter how hard we paddle upstream.
I don’t know facts, and probably there aren’t any to know. Whatever crazy thing people want to believe, that’s what they call it, a fact.
Inhuman, V says. But that’s an easy word. We’ve been doing that sort of thing to each other all through history, back past the Pyramids. Humans are inhuman, whether it’s by direct action or by acceptance of a horrible action as normal.
If she had not been alone, she would never have seen the panther or felt the hope it spread into the world like rings around the splash of a rock thrown into a still lake.
If you mean slaves, you only remember what they allowed you to remember. Even if Davis Bend was really as humane as you believe, they kept their misery to themselves, kept it a mystery to you. I promise that’s true. Think of it as a great gift, a mark of affection. Their protection of your memory.
He saw with sorrow that hers was a life he could step right into and keep working at hard from tonight until death. If he allowed himself to ponder it for a minute, he saw all the world hanging over the girl like the deadfall to a trap, ready to drop and crush.
Had she been an old woman who long ago in her youth sang beautifully, one might have said that she had learned to use the diminished nature of her voice to maximum effect, that it was a lesson in how to live with damage, how to make peace with it and use it for what it can do. But she was not an old woman.