The men were ruthless because the past had been spoiled, but the women knew how the past would cry to them in the coming days.
My friend Jack Wagner has often, in Mexico, assumed this state of being. Let us say we wanted to walk in the streets of Mexico ity but not at random. We would choose some article almost certain not to exist there and then diligently try to find it.
It is possible that the chauffeurs of Moscow are very rich and happy people, but they are necessary, since it is difficult for a foreigner to get a driver’s license. One correspondent took his examination for a license, but he failed on the question, “What does not belong on an automobile?” He could think of many things that did not belong on an automobile and finally picked one, but he was wrong. The proper answer was “mud.
But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.
I seen turtles all my life. They’re always goin’ someplace. They always seem to want to get there.
And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white. The centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color: cherries and apples, peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight.
You can’t start with a democracy. You have to work up through stuff like tyranny and monarchy first. That way people are so relieved when they get to democracy that they hang on to it.
Adam fluttered like a bewildered bee confused by too many flowers.
It’s too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry.
Timshel- thou mayest.
You know, Suzy, they ain’t no way in the world to get in trouble by keeping your mouth shut. You look back at every mess you ever got in and you’ll find your tongue started it.
How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and clearness is there, maybe the result of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.
There is no loneliness like that of one who can only give and no anger like that of those who only receive and hate the weight of debt.
The preacher rose high on his elbow. “Law changes,” he said, “but ‘got to’s’ go on. You got the right to do what you got to do.
And even childhood was no good any more – not the way it was. No worry then but how to find a good stone, not round exactly but flattened and water-shaped, to use in a sling pouch cut from a discarded shoe. Where did all the good stones go, and all simplicity?
Awright – take ’im.” He did not look down at the dog at all. He lay back on his bunk and crossed his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling. From.
Coming out of sleep, I had the advantage of two worlds, the layered firmament of dream and the temporal fixtures of the mind awake. I stretched luxuriously – a good and tingling sensation. It’s as though the skin has shrunk in the night and one must push it out to daytime size by bulging the muscles, and there’s an a itching pleasure in it.
I knew from combat that casualties are the victims of a process, not of anger nor of hate or cruelty. And I believe that in the moment of acceptance, between winner and loser, between killer and killed, there is love.
War did not make a killer of me, although for a time I killed men.
St. Paul has just closed his book. His finger marks the last page read and on his face are the wonder and will to understand after the book is closed. Maybe understanding is possible only after.