Then it occured to me that the elicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communication they tend to disappear. A man with nothing to say has no words.
Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead.
I don’t know whether I can accept things or not,” Lee said “I’ve never had a chance to try. I’ve always found myself with some – not less uncertain but less able to take care of uncertainty. I’ve had to do my weeping – alone.
Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.
After listening to all this information we came to the conclusion that the world of Sir John Mandeville has by no means disappeared, that the world of two-headed men and flying serpents has not disappeared. And, indeed, while we were away the flying saucers appeared, which do nothing to overturn our thesis. And it seems to us now the most dangerous tendency in the world is the desire to believe a rumor rather than to pin down a fact.
Monterey is a place, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.
I’ll rustle up some dinner.
The family met at the most important place, near the truck. The house was dead, and the fields were dead; but this truck was the active thing, the living principle.
He was concupiscent as a rabbit and gentle as hell.
Can you not see, Robert? People have so often been hurt and trapped and tortured by ideas and contraptions which they did not understand, that they have come to believe all things passing their understanding are vicious and evil – to think of them as things to be stamped out and destroyed by the first comer. They only protect themselves, thus against the ghastly hurts that can come to them from little things grown up.
A farmer cannot think too much evil of a good farmer.
Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it?
My great complaint is that the only possession I carry about with me is a bag of losses. I am the owner solely of the memory of things I used to have. Perhaps it is well – for I seem to love them more now that I have them not.
Pearls were accidents, and the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God or the gods or both.
Difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I.
Her great-great-great-great-great grandmother had been burned as a witch.
Ever since I lost the spirit, I’d just as soon go one way or the other. I’ll go your way.
Why, of course you can go. Aren’t you happy here?” “I don’t think I’ve ever known what you people call happiness. We think of contentment as the desirable thing, and maybe that’s negative.
His body was as insensitive to pain as was his mind to subtleties.
And then I saw what I was to see so many times on the journey – a look of longing. “Lord! I wish I could go.