Joseph habitually scowled at furniture, expecting it to be impertinent, mischievous, or dusty.
It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by division.
Woman can change better’n man,” Ma said soothingly. “Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.
Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn’t in time.
Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure – never sure of her because you aren’t sure of yourself?
They taught us a toast in Ukranian which we like: ‘Let us drink to make people at home happy.’ And they toasted again to peace, always to peace. Both of these men had been soldiers, and both of them had been wounded, and they drank to peace.
Cand cauti inapoi cu atentie, poti gasi intotdeauna momentul de inceput al unei noi epoci, dupa care totul merge de la sine, se inlantuie.
A dragon killer, he was, a rescuer of damsels, and his small sins seemed so great to him that he felt unfit and unseemly. She wished her father were here. Her father had felt greatness in Tom. Perhaps he would know now how to release it out of its darkness and let it fly free.
When angered she had a terrible eye which could blanch the skin off a bad child as easily as if he were a boiled almond.
Prayer never brought in no side-meat.
It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.
Henri the painter was not French and his name was not Henri. Also he was not really a painter. Henri has so steeped himself in stories of the Left Bank in Paris that he lived there although he had never been there.
There’s a capacity for appetite,′ Samuel said, ’that a whole heaven and earth of cake can’t satisfy.
We now face the danger, which in the past has been the most destructive to thehumans: Success, plenty, comfort and ever-increasing leisure. No dynamic peoplehas ever survived these dangers.
Jesus Christ, one person with their mind made up can shove a lot of folks aroun’! You win, Ma. Put away that jack handle ’fore you hurt somebody.
Sure, cried the tenant men, but it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it.
He needs us like he needs a mud dauber’s nest up his pant leg.
She had not prayed directly for the recovery of the baby – she had prayed that they might find a pearl with which to hire the doctor to cure the baby, for the minds of people are as unsubstantial as the mirage of the Gulf.
Money’s easy to make if it’s money you want. But with few exceptions people don’t want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.
I don’t ever drink alone. It’s not much fun. And I don’t think I will until I am an alcoholic.