And when he drove away from his old friends they knew they would not see him again, although he did not say it. He took to gazing at the mountains and the trees, even at faces, as though to memorize them for eternity.
The ancients placed love and war in the hands of closely related gods. That was no accident. That, sir, was a profound knowledge of man.
No, in Ireland.” “And in a few years you can almost disappear; while I, who was born in Grass Valley, went to school and several years to the University of California, have no chance of mixing.
Just think what this land would raise with plenty of water! Why, it will be a frigging garden!
His attention seemed tied to her face by a taut string.
There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything.
The honest preachers had energy and go. They fought the devil, no holds barred, boots and eye-gouging permitted. You might get the idea that they howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem on a row of circus horns.
And I here make a rule-a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting-only the deeply personal and familiar.
The mountains sat with their feet in the sea, and the old man’s house was on the knees.
Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and change it for you to a kind of wisdom. His mind had no horizon – and his sympathy had no warp.
I suppose you think I am going to give you one of those ‘You are going out into the world’ speeches. Well, you are perfectly right. You are going out into the world and it is a mess, a frightened, neurotic, gibbering mess. And there isn’t anyone out there to help you because all the people who are already out there are in a worse state than you are, because they have been there longer and a good number of them have given up.
Swedes up in Dakota – know what they do sometimes? Put pepper on the floor. Gits up the ladies’ skirts an’ makes ’em purty lively – lively as a filly in season. Swedes do that sometimes.” In.
I was mean life a wolf. Now i’m mean like a weasel. When you’re huntin’ somepin you’re a hunter, an’ you’re strong. Can’t nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted – that’s different. Somepin happens to you. You ain’t strong; maybe you’re fierce, but you ain’t strong. I been hunted now for a long time. I ain’t no hunter no more.
It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times.
I’d think there are degrees of greatness,” Adam said. “I don’t think so,” said Samuel. “That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other – cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I’m glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other?
Give a little party,” she insisted. “Just a small affair. Nobody will dress. It’s the anniversary of the founding of the Bloomer League – you didn’t even remember that.” “It’s no use,” said Tom.
Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before they can make.
Git,” Ma said. “They’s times when how you feel got to be kep’ to yourself.
I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt – and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails.
Well, she thought, here it is just as I knew it would be. Here was her death. Her mind flashed to see if she had forgotten anything – will made, letters burned, new underwear, plenty of food in the house for dinner. She wondered whether she had turned out the light in the back room. It was all in a second. Then she thought there might be an outside chance of survival.