I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.
Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault.
At last both slept: the fire and candle went out. For me, the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and mind were alike strained by dread: such dread as children only can feel.
Vain favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished for, too late!
She might as well have said to the fire, "don't burn!"
"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"
"No, sir."
"What must you do to avoid it?"
"I deliberated for a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: "I must keep in good health, and not die."
"…it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear."
"I made no effort; I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in such goodness."
"When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should--so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again."
I rallied my forces for the worst. It came.
What my sensations were, no language can describe; but just as they all arose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit.
"By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world. I should have been continually at fault."
"Where is God? What is God?"
"My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what he created."
A phase of my life was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.
I had hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one. I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic.
"…a present has many faces to it, has it not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing an opinion on it."
"…you with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of mind I have placed in communication with my own: I know it is not one liable to take infection: it is a peculiar mind; it is an unique one. Happily I do not mean to harm it: but if I did, it would not take harm from me. There more you and I converse, the better, for while I cannot blight you, you may be refresh me."
"I feared the meeting in the morning: now I desire it, because expectation has been so long baffled that it is grown impatient."
"You," I said, "a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me."
"It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it…"
Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have, gathers impulsively around him. I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to attract: I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must, then, repeat continually that we are for ever sundered:--and yet, while I breathe and think I must love him.
"Pardon the seeming paradox: I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good, she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her."
'I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld; or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.'
"If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do, Jane?"
"Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could."
"Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments," he said; "that house is a mere dungeon: don't you feel it so?"
"It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir."
"The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes," he answered; "and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now here (he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) all is real, sweet, and pure."
"Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back to you: and wherever you are is my home-- my only home."
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with a lagging step, and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself looked so composed and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any confusion: the evil--if evil existent or prospective there was--seemed to lie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet.
"God pardon me!" he subjoined ere long, "and man meddle not with me: I have her, and will hold her."
"It will atone--it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God's tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgement--I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion--I defy it."
"Did she think, Janet, you had given the world for love, and considered it well lost?"
"Your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter."
Yet after all, my task was not an easy one; often I would rather have pleased than teased him. My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: of whom I had made an idol.
"A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; iced glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with trodden snow; and the woods which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway."
"Oh, nevermore could it turn to him; for faith was blighted--confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what had been; for he was not what I had thought him."
"I would not say he had betrayed me: but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea; and from his presence I must go; that I perceived well."
One idea only still throbbed life-like within me--a remembrance of God: it begot a muttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered; but no energy was found to express them:--
"Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help."
That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, "the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overwhelmed me."
"…that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it."
But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it; and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron, he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.
"Let me be torn away, then!" I cried. "Let another help me!"
"No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall."
"Great God!--what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?"
"I am my own mistress."
"No--no--Jane; you must not go. No--I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence--the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself--I must have you. The world may laugh--may call me absurd, selfish--but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied: or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame."
"Am I hideous, Jane?"
"Very, sir: you always were, you know."
"Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you sojourned."
"All the sunshine I can feel is in her presence."
(Aside.) "Damn him!"--(To me.) "Did you like him, Jane?"
"Yes, Mr. Rochester, I like him: but you asked me that before."
I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor. Jealously had got hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would not, therefore, immediately charm the snake.
"Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Eyre?" was the next somewhat unexpected observation.
"Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say the same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I have given you notice to quit?"
"Because I am comfortable there."
"You are no ruin, sir--no lightning struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop."
"Choose then, sir--her who loves you best."
"I will at least choose--her I love best."
"Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower--breathed guilt onto its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever."
"As I exclaimed 'Jane! Jane! Jane!' a voice--I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was--replied, 'I am coming: wait for me,' and a moment after, went whispering on the wind, the words--'Where are you?'"
I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth.
To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.
When his firstborn was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were--large, brilliant, and black. On that occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God has tempered judgment with mercy.
"My Master," he says, "has forewarned me. Daily he announces more distinctly,--'Surely I come quickly!' and hourly I more eagerly respond,--'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!'"
A Moveable Feast - Hemingway
“He’s just a showman and he corrupts for the pleasure of corruption and he leads people into other vicious practices as well.”
She wanted to know the gay part of how the world was going; never the real, never the bad.
I had learned already never to empty the well of my writings, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
“You are all a generation perdue.”
But the hell with her lost-generation talk and all the dirty, easy labels.
No one I knew was ever nicer to me.
“Don’t read too fast,” she said.
“And we’ll never love anyone else but each other.”
“No. Never.”
With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.
When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except when to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
It was all part of the fight against poverty that you never win except by not spending.
We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich.
She had the lovely high cheekbones for arrogance.
"There are so many sorts of hunger. In the spring there are more. But that's gone now. Memory is hunger."
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
Racing never came between us, only people could do that; but for a long time it stayed close to us like a demanding friend.
By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.
The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly.
It was a very simple story called "Out of Season" and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.
"You want me to paint you and pay you and bang you to keep my head clear, and be in love with you too," Pascin said. "You poor littl doll."
He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgment.
I tried to break his face down and describe it but I could only get the eyes. Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist.
Ernest Walsh was dark, intense, faultlessly Irish, poetic and clearly marked for death as a character is marked for death in a motion picture.
"Hem, I want you to keep this jar of opium and give it to Dunning only when he needs it."
"Monsieur Dunning est monte sur le toit et refuse categoriquement de descendre."
"We need more true mystery in our lives, Hem," he once said to me. "The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most at this time. There is, of course, the problem of sustenance."
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At once time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly anymore because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
I said I did not believe anyone could write any way except the very best he could write without destroying his talent.
Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try and make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.
Scott then asked me if I were afraid to die and I said more at some times than at others.
I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.
We were happy the way children are who have been separated and are together again and I told her about the trip.
"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love."
"We're awfully lucky."
"We'll have to be good and hold it."
Zelda had hawk's eyes and a thin mouth and deep-south manners and accent.
Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda's secret that she shared with me, as a hawk might share something with a man. But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane.
My words would become something that would have to be destroyed and sometimes, if possible, me with them.
When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon there would be little damage except to the birds. Those who attract people by their happiness and their performance are usually inexperienced. They do not know how not to be overrun and how to go away.
All things truly wicked start from an innocence. So you live day by day and enjoy what you have and do not worry. You lie and hate it and it destroys you and every day is more dangerous, but you live day to day as in a war.
I did my business in New York and when I got back to Paris I should have caught the first train from Gare de l'Est that would take me down to Austria. But the girl I was in love with was in Paris then, and I did not take the first train, or the second or the third.
I wished I had died before I loved anyone but her.
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.
She wanted to know the gay part of how the world was going; never the real, never the bad.
I had learned already never to empty the well of my writings, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
“You are all a generation perdue.”
But the hell with her lost-generation talk and all the dirty, easy labels.
No one I knew was ever nicer to me.
“Don’t read too fast,” she said.
“And we’ll never love anyone else but each other.”
“No. Never.”
With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.
When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except when to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
It was all part of the fight against poverty that you never win except by not spending.
We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich.
She had the lovely high cheekbones for arrogance.
"There are so many sorts of hunger. In the spring there are more. But that's gone now. Memory is hunger."
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
Racing never came between us, only people could do that; but for a long time it stayed close to us like a demanding friend.
By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.
The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly.
It was a very simple story called "Out of Season" and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.
"You want me to paint you and pay you and bang you to keep my head clear, and be in love with you too," Pascin said. "You poor littl doll."
He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgment.
I tried to break his face down and describe it but I could only get the eyes. Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist.
Ernest Walsh was dark, intense, faultlessly Irish, poetic and clearly marked for death as a character is marked for death in a motion picture.
"Hem, I want you to keep this jar of opium and give it to Dunning only when he needs it."
"Monsieur Dunning est monte sur le toit et refuse categoriquement de descendre."
"We need more true mystery in our lives, Hem," he once said to me. "The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most at this time. There is, of course, the problem of sustenance."
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At once time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly anymore because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
I said I did not believe anyone could write any way except the very best he could write without destroying his talent.
Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try and make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.
Scott then asked me if I were afraid to die and I said more at some times than at others.
I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.
We were happy the way children are who have been separated and are together again and I told her about the trip.
"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love."
"We're awfully lucky."
"We'll have to be good and hold it."
Zelda had hawk's eyes and a thin mouth and deep-south manners and accent.
Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda's secret that she shared with me, as a hawk might share something with a man. But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane.
My words would become something that would have to be destroyed and sometimes, if possible, me with them.
When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon there would be little damage except to the birds. Those who attract people by their happiness and their performance are usually inexperienced. They do not know how not to be overrun and how to go away.
All things truly wicked start from an innocence. So you live day by day and enjoy what you have and do not worry. You lie and hate it and it destroys you and every day is more dangerous, but you live day to day as in a war.
I did my business in New York and when I got back to Paris I should have caught the first train from Gare de l'Est that would take me down to Austria. But the girl I was in love with was in Paris then, and I did not take the first train, or the second or the third.
I wished I had died before I loved anyone but her.
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.
Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier
...all he could vision was a world from which everything he counted important had been banished or had willingly fled.
How did you find someone to hate for a thing that just was? What would be the cost of not having an enemy? Who could you strike for retribution other than yourself?
At the center of the light, a black silhouette of a figure moved as if walking, but the image was too vague to tell if it approached or walked away.
Am I meant to follow, or should I wait its coming? Ada wondered.
-And what this fellow come down for was to save us?
-Yes, Monroe said.
-From our own bad natures and the like?
-Yes.
-And they still done him like they did? Spiked him up and knifed him and all?
-Yes indeed, Monroe said.
-But you say this story's been passed around some hundred-score years? Esco said.
-Nearly.
-So to say, a long time.
-A very long time.
Esco grinned as if he had solved a puzzle and stood up and slapped Monroe on the shoulder and said, Well, about all we can do is hope it ain't so.
-I despise that bird, Ada said. He tried to flog me.
Ruby said, I'd not keep a flogging rooster.
-Then how might we run it off? Ada said.
The road, they said, was a place apart, a country of its own ruled by no government but natural law, and its one characteristic was freedom.
He said, I've been coming for you on a hard road. I'm never letting you go. Never.
This world won't stand long, the captive hollered in conclusion to his tale. God won't let it stand this way long.
The martins flew from the tree as one body, still in the shape of the round maple they had filled.
I'll soon be naught but scar.
The image was like oil on water. She had to tip it in her hand, making fine adjustments to get the light to make sense of it.
He seemed saddened that the tender moment had been lost and he could find no way to bring it back.
In her heart, though, she wondered, Is anything remembered forever?
We might never speak again, and I don't plan to leave that comment standing in the place of truth. You're not owning up to it, but you came with expectations and they were not realized. Largely because I behaved contrary to my heart. I'm sorry for that. And I would do it differently if given a chance to go back and revise.
-That's not a thing any of us are granted. To go back. Wipe away what later doesn't suit us and make it the way we wish it. You just go on.
Inman climbed part of one day and all of the next and there was still a wall of mountain reared up before him, the track rising tack and tack endlessly. It soon lifted him into a later stage of autumn, for in the heights the season was already far along, and there were as many leaves on the ground as in the trees.
I am stronger every minute, he thought to himself. But when he sought supporting evidence, he could find none.
Waves of mountains. For all the evidence the eye told, they were endless.
-That's just pain, she said. It goes eventually. And when it's gone, there's no lasting memory. Not the worst of it, anyway. It fades. Our minds aren't made to hold on to the particulars of pain the way we do bliss. It's a gift God gives us, a sign of His care for us.
You get to be my age, just recollecting pleasures long ago is pain enough.
...though he realized marriage implied some faith in a theoretical future, a projection of paired lines running forward through time, drawing nearer and nearer to one another until they became one line.
Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless.
Look here, the woman said. If I had a boy, I'd tell him the same as I'm telling you. Watch yourself.
God, if I could sprout wings and fly, he thought. I would be gone from this place, my great wings bearing me up and out, long feathers hissing in the wind.
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.
Sara had lit a tallow dip and was at the table washing dishes in a basin. The air around the light seemed thick. All the bright objects close to it haloed. Everything in the shadows beyond it was extinguished completely, as if never to reappear. The curve of the girl's back as she bent over the table seemed to Inman a shape not to be duplicated in all the time stretched out before him. A thing to fix in mind and hold...
-If I was to ask you to do something, would you do it?
Inman considered that he should frame an answer here on the order of Maybe, or If I can, or some provisional phrase.
What he said was, Yes.
The tick over the rope was filled with fresh straw and smelled dry and autumnal and sweet, and underlying that was the smell of the girl herself, like a stand of wet laurels after their blooms have fallen to the ground.
...the baby sleeping by the fire. Without her, Sara said, there'd be nothing holding me to earth.
Her singing against such resistance seemed to Inman about the bravest thing he had ever witnessed.
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.
Do just as much as you could do and still be able to get up and do again tomorrow. No more, and no less.
...as if he had long since cheerfully submitted to knowing that however well he rendered a piece, he could always imagine doing better.
She wiped the pen clean on a blotter and dipped again and wrote, Come back to me is my request.
Do you want to say something?
-No, the woman said. Every word in me would come out bitter.
-I can't ever look back on this day with a still mind if I let you go without cooking for you, she said.
The peaks now stood higher, the vales deeper than they did in truth. Inman imagined the fading rows of ridges standing pale and tall as cloudbanks, and he built the contours of them and he colored them, each a shade paler and bluer until, when had finally reached the invented ridgeline where it faded into sky, he was asleep.
I've no aim to trouble you. I'll walk on from here and never be back. I'm just asking for clear passage.
He could walk and the wind would blow the yellow leaves across his footsteps and he would be hid and safe from the wolfish gaze of the world at large.
He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.
It was me, I'd about rather rest of the mountain than anywhere else you could name.
They say you know Georgia when you come to it, for it's nothing but red dirt and rough roads.
All God's works but elaborate analogy. Every bright image in the visible world only a shadow of a divine thing, so that earth and heaven, low and high, strangely agreed in form and meaning because they were in fact congruent.
The rose-- it's thorns and its blossom-- a type of the difficult and dangerous path to spiritual awakening.
But you could not say the song had been improved, for as was true of all human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not, the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained, so that over time we'd be lucky if we just broke even. Any thought otherwise was empty pride.
She was so tired her legs felt burnt out from under her, but she believed she could get through this if she did one thing at a time and thought of the remaining things left to be done as sequential, not cumulative.
She would see him and know him in every feature.
You could become so lost in bitterness and anger that you could not find your way back. No map nor guidebook for such journey.
-I know I don't need him, Ada said. But I think I want him.
-What I'm certain I don't want, she finally said aloud, is to find myself someday in a new century, an old bitter woman looking back, wishing that right now I'd had more nerve.
The why of it, like much in life, offered little access to logic.
Then, immediately, longing of so many kinds welled up in him that he was afraid it would all come spilling out in a frightening mess of words if he didn't shut his mouth and find some better direction for his thoughts.
She had made her way to a place where an entirely other order prevailed from what she had always known.
He talked to her of the great waste of years between then and now. A long time gone. And it was pointless, he said, to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse.
You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell, Inman said, for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn't changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is go on or not. But if you go on, it's knowing you carry your scars with you.
There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.
And then she thought that you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past.
She smelled the sweet woodsmoke and thought that it would be a measure of one's success at attending to the details of the world if one could identify trees by the scent of their smoke. It would be a skill one might happily aspire to master. There were many worse things to know. Things that did damage to others and eventually to oneself.
The world was such an incredibly lonely place, and to lie down beside him, skin to skin, seemed the only cure.
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.
God lays the unbearable on you and then takes some back.
They were both at such an age that they stood on a cusp. They could think in one part of their minds that their whole lives stretched out before them without boundary or limit. At the same time another part guessed that youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment.
When Ada disappeared into the trees, it was like a part of the richness of the world had gone with her. He had been alone in the world and empty for so long. But she filled him full, and so he believed everything that had been taken out of him might have been for a purpose. To clear the space for something better.
He tried to talk, but she hushed him. He drifted in and out and dreamed a bright dream of home. It had a coldwater spring rising out of rock, black dirt fields, old trees. In his dream the year seemed to be happening all at one time, all the seasons blending together. Apple trees hanging heavy with fruit but yet unaccountably blossoming, ice rimming the spring, okra plants blooming yellow and maroon, maple leaves as red as October, corn tops tasseling, a stuffed chair pulled up to the glowing parlor hearth, pumpkins shining in the fields, laurels blooming on the hillsides, ditch banks full of orange jewelweed, white blossoms on dogwood, purple on redbud. Everything coming around at once.
How did you find someone to hate for a thing that just was? What would be the cost of not having an enemy? Who could you strike for retribution other than yourself?
At the center of the light, a black silhouette of a figure moved as if walking, but the image was too vague to tell if it approached or walked away.
Am I meant to follow, or should I wait its coming? Ada wondered.
-And what this fellow come down for was to save us?
-Yes, Monroe said.
-From our own bad natures and the like?
-Yes.
-And they still done him like they did? Spiked him up and knifed him and all?
-Yes indeed, Monroe said.
-But you say this story's been passed around some hundred-score years? Esco said.
-Nearly.
-So to say, a long time.
-A very long time.
Esco grinned as if he had solved a puzzle and stood up and slapped Monroe on the shoulder and said, Well, about all we can do is hope it ain't so.
-I despise that bird, Ada said. He tried to flog me.
Ruby said, I'd not keep a flogging rooster.
-Then how might we run it off? Ada said.
The road, they said, was a place apart, a country of its own ruled by no government but natural law, and its one characteristic was freedom.
He said, I've been coming for you on a hard road. I'm never letting you go. Never.
This world won't stand long, the captive hollered in conclusion to his tale. God won't let it stand this way long.
The martins flew from the tree as one body, still in the shape of the round maple they had filled.
I'll soon be naught but scar.
The image was like oil on water. She had to tip it in her hand, making fine adjustments to get the light to make sense of it.
He seemed saddened that the tender moment had been lost and he could find no way to bring it back.
In her heart, though, she wondered, Is anything remembered forever?
We might never speak again, and I don't plan to leave that comment standing in the place of truth. You're not owning up to it, but you came with expectations and they were not realized. Largely because I behaved contrary to my heart. I'm sorry for that. And I would do it differently if given a chance to go back and revise.
-That's not a thing any of us are granted. To go back. Wipe away what later doesn't suit us and make it the way we wish it. You just go on.
Inman climbed part of one day and all of the next and there was still a wall of mountain reared up before him, the track rising tack and tack endlessly. It soon lifted him into a later stage of autumn, for in the heights the season was already far along, and there were as many leaves on the ground as in the trees.
I am stronger every minute, he thought to himself. But when he sought supporting evidence, he could find none.
Waves of mountains. For all the evidence the eye told, they were endless.
-That's just pain, she said. It goes eventually. And when it's gone, there's no lasting memory. Not the worst of it, anyway. It fades. Our minds aren't made to hold on to the particulars of pain the way we do bliss. It's a gift God gives us, a sign of His care for us.
You get to be my age, just recollecting pleasures long ago is pain enough.
...though he realized marriage implied some faith in a theoretical future, a projection of paired lines running forward through time, drawing nearer and nearer to one another until they became one line.
Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless.
Look here, the woman said. If I had a boy, I'd tell him the same as I'm telling you. Watch yourself.
God, if I could sprout wings and fly, he thought. I would be gone from this place, my great wings bearing me up and out, long feathers hissing in the wind.
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.
Sara had lit a tallow dip and was at the table washing dishes in a basin. The air around the light seemed thick. All the bright objects close to it haloed. Everything in the shadows beyond it was extinguished completely, as if never to reappear. The curve of the girl's back as she bent over the table seemed to Inman a shape not to be duplicated in all the time stretched out before him. A thing to fix in mind and hold...
-If I was to ask you to do something, would you do it?
Inman considered that he should frame an answer here on the order of Maybe, or If I can, or some provisional phrase.
What he said was, Yes.
The tick over the rope was filled with fresh straw and smelled dry and autumnal and sweet, and underlying that was the smell of the girl herself, like a stand of wet laurels after their blooms have fallen to the ground.
...the baby sleeping by the fire. Without her, Sara said, there'd be nothing holding me to earth.
Her singing against such resistance seemed to Inman about the bravest thing he had ever witnessed.
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.
Do just as much as you could do and still be able to get up and do again tomorrow. No more, and no less.
...as if he had long since cheerfully submitted to knowing that however well he rendered a piece, he could always imagine doing better.
She wiped the pen clean on a blotter and dipped again and wrote, Come back to me is my request.
Do you want to say something?
-No, the woman said. Every word in me would come out bitter.
-I can't ever look back on this day with a still mind if I let you go without cooking for you, she said.
The peaks now stood higher, the vales deeper than they did in truth. Inman imagined the fading rows of ridges standing pale and tall as cloudbanks, and he built the contours of them and he colored them, each a shade paler and bluer until, when had finally reached the invented ridgeline where it faded into sky, he was asleep.
I've no aim to trouble you. I'll walk on from here and never be back. I'm just asking for clear passage.
He could walk and the wind would blow the yellow leaves across his footsteps and he would be hid and safe from the wolfish gaze of the world at large.
He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.
It was me, I'd about rather rest of the mountain than anywhere else you could name.
They say you know Georgia when you come to it, for it's nothing but red dirt and rough roads.
All God's works but elaborate analogy. Every bright image in the visible world only a shadow of a divine thing, so that earth and heaven, low and high, strangely agreed in form and meaning because they were in fact congruent.
The rose-- it's thorns and its blossom-- a type of the difficult and dangerous path to spiritual awakening.
But you could not say the song had been improved, for as was true of all human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not, the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained, so that over time we'd be lucky if we just broke even. Any thought otherwise was empty pride.
She was so tired her legs felt burnt out from under her, but she believed she could get through this if she did one thing at a time and thought of the remaining things left to be done as sequential, not cumulative.
She would see him and know him in every feature.
You could become so lost in bitterness and anger that you could not find your way back. No map nor guidebook for such journey.
-I know I don't need him, Ada said. But I think I want him.
-What I'm certain I don't want, she finally said aloud, is to find myself someday in a new century, an old bitter woman looking back, wishing that right now I'd had more nerve.
The why of it, like much in life, offered little access to logic.
Then, immediately, longing of so many kinds welled up in him that he was afraid it would all come spilling out in a frightening mess of words if he didn't shut his mouth and find some better direction for his thoughts.
She had made her way to a place where an entirely other order prevailed from what she had always known.
He talked to her of the great waste of years between then and now. A long time gone. And it was pointless, he said, to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse.
You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell, Inman said, for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn't changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is go on or not. But if you go on, it's knowing you carry your scars with you.
There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.
And then she thought that you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past.
She smelled the sweet woodsmoke and thought that it would be a measure of one's success at attending to the details of the world if one could identify trees by the scent of their smoke. It would be a skill one might happily aspire to master. There were many worse things to know. Things that did damage to others and eventually to oneself.
The world was such an incredibly lonely place, and to lie down beside him, skin to skin, seemed the only cure.
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.
God lays the unbearable on you and then takes some back.
They were both at such an age that they stood on a cusp. They could think in one part of their minds that their whole lives stretched out before them without boundary or limit. At the same time another part guessed that youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment.
When Ada disappeared into the trees, it was like a part of the richness of the world had gone with her. He had been alone in the world and empty for so long. But she filled him full, and so he believed everything that had been taken out of him might have been for a purpose. To clear the space for something better.
He tried to talk, but she hushed him. He drifted in and out and dreamed a bright dream of home. It had a coldwater spring rising out of rock, black dirt fields, old trees. In his dream the year seemed to be happening all at one time, all the seasons blending together. Apple trees hanging heavy with fruit but yet unaccountably blossoming, ice rimming the spring, okra plants blooming yellow and maroon, maple leaves as red as October, corn tops tasseling, a stuffed chair pulled up to the glowing parlor hearth, pumpkins shining in the fields, laurels blooming on the hillsides, ditch banks full of orange jewelweed, white blossoms on dogwood, purple on redbud. Everything coming around at once.
A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway
I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.
I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was...
He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget.
"I don't know," I said. "There isn't always an explanation for everything."
"Oh, isn't there? I was brought up to think there was."
"That's awfully nice."
"Have you ever loved any one?"
"No," I said.
I was angry and yet certain, seeing it all ahead like moves in a chess game.
"Oh, darling," she said. "You will be good to me, won't you?"
What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying.
"You will, won't you?" She looked up at me. "Because we're going to have a strange life."
She looked at me, "And you do love me?"
"Yes," I lied. "I love you." I had not said it before.
"You won't go away?"
"No. I'll always come back."
The major said he had heard a report that I could drink. I denied this.
"There is a class that controls a country that is stupid and does not realize anything and never can. That is why we have this war."
Then there was a flash, as when a blast furnace door is swung open, and a road that started white and went red and on and on in a rushing wind. I tried to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind.
The doctors were working with their sleeves up to their shoulders and were red as butchers.
"Come, come," he said. Don't be a bloody hero." Then in Italian: "Lift him very carefully about the legs. His legs are very painful. He is the legitimate son of President Wilson."
"You are really an Italian. All fire and smoke and nothing inside."
"My God what would a man do with a woman like that except worship her?"
"You understand but you do not love God."
"No."
"You do not love Him at all?" he asked.
"I am afraid of Him in the night sometimes."
"You should love Him."
"I don't love much."
"Hello, darling," she said. She looked fresh and young and very beautiful. I thought I had never seen anyone so beautiful.
God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one. But God knows I had...
It was as though we met again after each of us had been away on a long journey.
I loved to take her hair down and she sat on the bed and kept very still, except suddenly she would dip down to kiss me while I was doing it, and I would take out the pins and lay them on the sheet and it would be loose and I would watch her while she kept very still and then take out the last two pins and it would all come down and she would drop her head and we would both be inside of it, and it was the feeling of inside a tent or behind falls.
She had wonderfully beautiful hair and I would lie sometimes and watch her twisting it up in the light that came in the open door and it shone even in the night as water shines sometimes just before it is really daylight.
"Don't talk as though you had to make an honest woman of me, darling. I'm a very honest woman. You can't be ashamed of something if you're only happy and proud of it. Aren't you happy?"
"I've always been afraid of the rain."
There was a great contrast between his world of pessimism and personal cheeriness.
"Because there's only us two and in the world there's all the rest of them. If anything comes between us we're gone and then they have us."
"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?"
"Of course. Who said it?"
"I don't know."
"He was probably a coward," she said. "He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them."
"I am very tired of this war. If I was away I do not believe I would come back."
"I will get you drunk and take out your liver and put you in a good Italian liver and make you a man again."
"No. We never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn. You never get anything new. We all start complete."
"I don't give a damn," Rinaldi said to the table. "To hell with the whole business." He looked defiantly around the table, his eyes flat, his face pale.
"All right," I said. "To hell with the whole damn business."
"No one ever stopped when they were winning."
"We won't talk about losing. There is enough talk about losing. What has been done this summer cannot have been done in vain."
Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again.
I could remember Catherine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, so I would not think about her, only about her a little...
"I don't live at all when I'm not with you."
"I won't ever go away," I said. "I'm no good when you're not there. I haven't any life at all any more."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "that's what I want too."
"In the spring when it is nice you could come and enjoy it. We could put the little one and the nurse in the big room that is closed now and you and Madame could have your same room looking out over the lake."
"I'm not brave any more, darling. I'm all broken. They've broken me. I know it now."
"Everybody is that way."
"But it's awful. They just keep it up till they break you."
But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.
"Don't worry, darling," Catherine said. "I'm not a bit afraid. It's just a dirty trick."
I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was...
He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget.
"I don't know," I said. "There isn't always an explanation for everything."
"Oh, isn't there? I was brought up to think there was."
"That's awfully nice."
"Have you ever loved any one?"
"No," I said.
I was angry and yet certain, seeing it all ahead like moves in a chess game.
"Oh, darling," she said. "You will be good to me, won't you?"
What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying.
"You will, won't you?" She looked up at me. "Because we're going to have a strange life."
She looked at me, "And you do love me?"
"Yes," I lied. "I love you." I had not said it before.
"You won't go away?"
"No. I'll always come back."
The major said he had heard a report that I could drink. I denied this.
"There is a class that controls a country that is stupid and does not realize anything and never can. That is why we have this war."
Then there was a flash, as when a blast furnace door is swung open, and a road that started white and went red and on and on in a rushing wind. I tried to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind.
The doctors were working with their sleeves up to their shoulders and were red as butchers.
"Come, come," he said. Don't be a bloody hero." Then in Italian: "Lift him very carefully about the legs. His legs are very painful. He is the legitimate son of President Wilson."
"You are really an Italian. All fire and smoke and nothing inside."
"My God what would a man do with a woman like that except worship her?"
"You understand but you do not love God."
"No."
"You do not love Him at all?" he asked.
"I am afraid of Him in the night sometimes."
"You should love Him."
"I don't love much."
"Hello, darling," she said. She looked fresh and young and very beautiful. I thought I had never seen anyone so beautiful.
God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with any one. But God knows I had...
It was as though we met again after each of us had been away on a long journey.
I loved to take her hair down and she sat on the bed and kept very still, except suddenly she would dip down to kiss me while I was doing it, and I would take out the pins and lay them on the sheet and it would be loose and I would watch her while she kept very still and then take out the last two pins and it would all come down and she would drop her head and we would both be inside of it, and it was the feeling of inside a tent or behind falls.
She had wonderfully beautiful hair and I would lie sometimes and watch her twisting it up in the light that came in the open door and it shone even in the night as water shines sometimes just before it is really daylight.
"Don't talk as though you had to make an honest woman of me, darling. I'm a very honest woman. You can't be ashamed of something if you're only happy and proud of it. Aren't you happy?"
"I've always been afraid of the rain."
There was a great contrast between his world of pessimism and personal cheeriness.
"Because there's only us two and in the world there's all the rest of them. If anything comes between us we're gone and then they have us."
"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?"
"Of course. Who said it?"
"I don't know."
"He was probably a coward," she said. "He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them."
"I am very tired of this war. If I was away I do not believe I would come back."
"I will get you drunk and take out your liver and put you in a good Italian liver and make you a man again."
"No. We never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn. You never get anything new. We all start complete."
"I don't give a damn," Rinaldi said to the table. "To hell with the whole business." He looked defiantly around the table, his eyes flat, his face pale.
"All right," I said. "To hell with the whole damn business."
"No one ever stopped when they were winning."
"We won't talk about losing. There is enough talk about losing. What has been done this summer cannot have been done in vain."
Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again.
I could remember Catherine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, so I would not think about her, only about her a little...
"I don't live at all when I'm not with you."
"I won't ever go away," I said. "I'm no good when you're not there. I haven't any life at all any more."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "that's what I want too."
"In the spring when it is nice you could come and enjoy it. We could put the little one and the nurse in the big room that is closed now and you and Madame could have your same room looking out over the lake."
"I'm not brave any more, darling. I'm all broken. They've broken me. I know it now."
"Everybody is that way."
"But it's awful. They just keep it up till they break you."
But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.
"Don't worry, darling," Catherine said. "I'm not a bit afraid. It's just a dirty trick."
The Garden of Eden - Hemingway Quotes
They were always hungry but they ate very well. They were hungry for breakfast which they ate at the cafe, ordering brioche and cafe au lait and eggs, and the type of preserve that they chose and the manner in which the eggs were to be cooked was an excitement.
On this morning there was brioche and red raspberry preserve and the eggs were boiled and there was a pat of butter that melted as they stirred them and salted them lightly and ground pepper over them in cups.
"I'm the destructive type," she said. "And I'm going to destroy you. They'll put up a plaque on the wall of the building outside the room."
The young man paid for the lunch and drank the wine that was left in the bottle. Then he went upstairs. The girl's clothes were folded on one of the Van Gogh chairs and she was waiting for him in the bed with the sheet over her. Her hair was spread out over the pillow and her eyes were laughing and he lifted the sheet and she said, "Hello, darling. Did you have a nice lunch?"
They were hungry for lunch and the bottle of white wine was cold and they drank it as they ate the celery remoulade and the small radishes and the home pickled mushrooms from the big glass jar. The bass was grilled and the grill marks showed on the silver skin and the butter melted on the hot plate. There was sliced lemon to press on the bass and fresh bread from the bakery and the wine cooled their tongues from the heat of the fried potatoes.
She slipped out of bed and stood straight with her long brown legs and her beautiful body tanned evenly from the far beach where they swam without suits. She held her shoulders back and her chin up and she shook her head so her heavy tawny hair slapped around her cheeks and then bowed forward so it all fell forward and covered her face.
She had always looked, he thought, exactly her age which was now twenty-one. He had been very proud of her for that. But tonight she did not look it. The lines of her cheekbones showed clear as he had never seen them before and she smiled and her face was heartbreaking.
"You don't mind if we've gone to the devil, do you?"
"No, girl," he said.
"You see," she said. "That's the surprise. I'm a girl. But now I'm a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything."
They ate a steak for dinner, rare, with mashed potatoes and flageolets and a salad and the girl asked if they might drink Tavel. "It is a great wine for people that are in love," she said.
"Let's lie very still and quiet and hold each other and not think at all," he said and his heart said goodbye Catherine goodbye my lovely girl goodbye and good luck and goodbye.
But he was very worried now and he thought what will become of us if things have gone this wildly and this dangerously and this fast? What can there be that will not burn out in a fire that rages like this?
You're lucky to have a wife like her and a sin is what you feel bad after and you don't feel bad. Not with the wine you don't feel bad, he told himself, and what will you drink when the wine won't cover for you?
"You're awfully good. If I didn't love you for anything else I'd love you for your decisions."
He drank the hero drink but it did not taste so good and he ordered a fresh bottle of cold Perrier and made a short drink without ice.
What was it that she had said about destruction? He could not remember that. She'd said it but he could not remember it.
He loved her very much and everything about her and he went to sleep thinking about her cheek against his lips and how the next day they would both be darker from the sun and how dark can she become, he thought, and how dark will she ever really be?
"You know I haven't done anything bad to us. I had to do it. You know that."
Be careful, he said to himself, it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.
At the cafe he found the morning paper and the Paris papers of the day before and had his coffee and milk and the Bayonne ham with a big beautifully fresh egg that he ground coarse pepper over sparsely and spread a little mustard on before he broke the yolk.
"What did you do, Devil?"
The waiter brought them glasses of manzanilla from the lowland near Cadiz called the Marismas with thin slices of jamon serrano, a smoky, hard cured ham from pigs that fed on acorns, and bright red spicy salchichon, another even spicier dark sausage from a town called Vich and anchovies and garlic olives. They ate these and drank more of the manzanilla, which was light and nutty tasting.
"I never wanted to be a painter nor a writer until I came to this country. Now it's just like being hungry all the time and there's nothing you can ever do about it."
"Yes," she said. "I was thinking so much about myself that I was getting impossible again, like a painter and I was my own picture. It was awful. Now that I'm all right again I hope it still lasts."
"Stay the way you are."
"What makes your voice be different when you say it? I think I'll do it now."
"No. Not now."
"Thank you for the not now."
She can't blush again, David thought. But she did.
"People that can't blush are worthless."
"You're not afraid of him now are you?" Catherine asked her.
"Not at all," the girl said. She blushed again. "It tastes very good but terribly strong."
"They are strong," David said. "But there's a strong wind today and we drink according to the wind."
"I hope she will be happy," the girl said. "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
"I wish I could remember what it was we lost. But it doesn't matter does it? You said it didn't matter."
"Perversion is dull and old fashioned. I didn't know people like us even kept up on it."
"I suppose it's only really interesting the first time one does," Catherine said.
It was a shame a man with such a talent for disaster and for delight should have gone the way he went, he thought.
"Do you want to swim down once before we go in?"
"Just once," she said. "In this very deep part."
"We'll swim down until we can just make it up."
They kissed and she said, "Everything of ours washed into the ocean."
His father was not vulnerable he knew and, unlike most people he had known, only death could kill him.
His father, who ran his life more disastrously than any man that he had ever known, gave marvelous advice.
"The hell with you too."
"That's good. Now you're reacting better. I like when you are more careless. Kiss me goodbye. I mean good afternoon."
"So what do you and I do?"
"What we can."
"I'll put on one of my tight shirts so you can tell what I think about things," she said.
"It's terrible to be in bed together and be lonely."
"You want everything so much and when you get it it's over and you don't give a damn."
He could not help wanting to read it with her and he could not help sharing what he had never shared and what he had believed could not and should not be shared.
I do love her and you make a note of it, whiskey, and you witness it for me, Perrier old boy old Perrier, I have been faithful to you, Perrier, in my fucking fashion.
"All I want to do is kill you," David said. "And the only reason I don't do it is because you are crazy."
I love you and I always will and I am sorry. What a useless word.
...he found that he still could be, and was, moved by her.
On this morning there was brioche and red raspberry preserve and the eggs were boiled and there was a pat of butter that melted as they stirred them and salted them lightly and ground pepper over them in cups.
"I'm the destructive type," she said. "And I'm going to destroy you. They'll put up a plaque on the wall of the building outside the room."
The young man paid for the lunch and drank the wine that was left in the bottle. Then he went upstairs. The girl's clothes were folded on one of the Van Gogh chairs and she was waiting for him in the bed with the sheet over her. Her hair was spread out over the pillow and her eyes were laughing and he lifted the sheet and she said, "Hello, darling. Did you have a nice lunch?"
They were hungry for lunch and the bottle of white wine was cold and they drank it as they ate the celery remoulade and the small radishes and the home pickled mushrooms from the big glass jar. The bass was grilled and the grill marks showed on the silver skin and the butter melted on the hot plate. There was sliced lemon to press on the bass and fresh bread from the bakery and the wine cooled their tongues from the heat of the fried potatoes.
She slipped out of bed and stood straight with her long brown legs and her beautiful body tanned evenly from the far beach where they swam without suits. She held her shoulders back and her chin up and she shook her head so her heavy tawny hair slapped around her cheeks and then bowed forward so it all fell forward and covered her face.
She had always looked, he thought, exactly her age which was now twenty-one. He had been very proud of her for that. But tonight she did not look it. The lines of her cheekbones showed clear as he had never seen them before and she smiled and her face was heartbreaking.
"You don't mind if we've gone to the devil, do you?"
"No, girl," he said.
"You see," she said. "That's the surprise. I'm a girl. But now I'm a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything."
They ate a steak for dinner, rare, with mashed potatoes and flageolets and a salad and the girl asked if they might drink Tavel. "It is a great wine for people that are in love," she said.
"Let's lie very still and quiet and hold each other and not think at all," he said and his heart said goodbye Catherine goodbye my lovely girl goodbye and good luck and goodbye.
But he was very worried now and he thought what will become of us if things have gone this wildly and this dangerously and this fast? What can there be that will not burn out in a fire that rages like this?
You're lucky to have a wife like her and a sin is what you feel bad after and you don't feel bad. Not with the wine you don't feel bad, he told himself, and what will you drink when the wine won't cover for you?
"You're awfully good. If I didn't love you for anything else I'd love you for your decisions."
He drank the hero drink but it did not taste so good and he ordered a fresh bottle of cold Perrier and made a short drink without ice.
What was it that she had said about destruction? He could not remember that. She'd said it but he could not remember it.
He loved her very much and everything about her and he went to sleep thinking about her cheek against his lips and how the next day they would both be darker from the sun and how dark can she become, he thought, and how dark will she ever really be?
"You know I haven't done anything bad to us. I had to do it. You know that."
Be careful, he said to himself, it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.
At the cafe he found the morning paper and the Paris papers of the day before and had his coffee and milk and the Bayonne ham with a big beautifully fresh egg that he ground coarse pepper over sparsely and spread a little mustard on before he broke the yolk.
"What did you do, Devil?"
The waiter brought them glasses of manzanilla from the lowland near Cadiz called the Marismas with thin slices of jamon serrano, a smoky, hard cured ham from pigs that fed on acorns, and bright red spicy salchichon, another even spicier dark sausage from a town called Vich and anchovies and garlic olives. They ate these and drank more of the manzanilla, which was light and nutty tasting.
"I never wanted to be a painter nor a writer until I came to this country. Now it's just like being hungry all the time and there's nothing you can ever do about it."
"Yes," she said. "I was thinking so much about myself that I was getting impossible again, like a painter and I was my own picture. It was awful. Now that I'm all right again I hope it still lasts."
"Stay the way you are."
"What makes your voice be different when you say it? I think I'll do it now."
"No. Not now."
"Thank you for the not now."
She can't blush again, David thought. But she did.
"People that can't blush are worthless."
"You're not afraid of him now are you?" Catherine asked her.
"Not at all," the girl said. She blushed again. "It tastes very good but terribly strong."
"They are strong," David said. "But there's a strong wind today and we drink according to the wind."
"I hope she will be happy," the girl said. "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
"I wish I could remember what it was we lost. But it doesn't matter does it? You said it didn't matter."
"Perversion is dull and old fashioned. I didn't know people like us even kept up on it."
"I suppose it's only really interesting the first time one does," Catherine said.
It was a shame a man with such a talent for disaster and for delight should have gone the way he went, he thought.
"Do you want to swim down once before we go in?"
"Just once," she said. "In this very deep part."
"We'll swim down until we can just make it up."
They kissed and she said, "Everything of ours washed into the ocean."
His father was not vulnerable he knew and, unlike most people he had known, only death could kill him.
His father, who ran his life more disastrously than any man that he had ever known, gave marvelous advice.
"The hell with you too."
"That's good. Now you're reacting better. I like when you are more careless. Kiss me goodbye. I mean good afternoon."
"So what do you and I do?"
"What we can."
"I'll put on one of my tight shirts so you can tell what I think about things," she said.
"It's terrible to be in bed together and be lonely."
"You want everything so much and when you get it it's over and you don't give a damn."
He could not help wanting to read it with her and he could not help sharing what he had never shared and what he had believed could not and should not be shared.
I do love her and you make a note of it, whiskey, and you witness it for me, Perrier old boy old Perrier, I have been faithful to you, Perrier, in my fucking fashion.
"All I want to do is kill you," David said. "And the only reason I don't do it is because you are crazy."
I love you and I always will and I am sorry. What a useless word.
...he found that he still could be, and was, moved by her.
Davita's Harp - Chaim Potok Quotes
He shot my mother a look of disgust. She came to below his shoulders in height but met the look defiantly, craning her neck and staring straight at him until he turned away.
My mother explained words to me in a special way. She would give me the present meaning of the words and a brief account of its origin. If she did not know its origin, she would look it up in the dictionary in the bedroom near my father's desk.
It was important for everyone to know all the time that they weren't alone, my aunt said.
My room turned cold again. I saw my breath on my window and wrote my name with my finger, using the penmanship I was learning in school. Illana Davita Chandal. My name written clearly on a window against the cold night.
A quality of intense power seemed to radiate from his fragility, from his hooded eyes and hoarse voice, from his occasional cough. I found myself often staring at him, fascinated, unable to take my eyes from his face.
I asked my mother what the word religious meant.
She said it came from an old word that meant to bind, to tie.
There is no feeling more terrible than loneliness, no feeling worse than the sensation of being locked inside your own heart.
"I am a writer of stories," he said quietly in his raspy voice. "A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life."
"Along the slope grew an unusual lilylike flower. Its outer leafy sepals were dark blue, its inner whorl of scented petals were pale blue, its stem was light purple."
And once again she turned and looked yearningly toward the cottage. She seemed to be measuring the steepness of the slope. Then the bird heard her murmur sadly, wearily, "I cannot endure the slope."
A long day in the sun on the margin of the sea.
He let me lead him into the water. He shivered with the cold and cried out as a wave broke too high against us and nearly knocked him off his feet. His face was white with fear. But I held onto him and soon the sea felt warm and we went deeper into the waves and I showed him how to ride the crests, how to anticipate the swells, how to jump as they billowed, what to do when they crash and came rushing toward us in a charging cascade of foaming water. We held hands and jumped up and down in the water, riding the waves.
"I would touch the surf. His ship was on this water and now I'm touching his ship."
He kissed me on my face and held me a long time. He was tall and strong and I loved him, my father, Michael Chandal.
"I don't like boats. Boats frighten me. People I love keep going away from me on boats."
"Forgive me. I do not like to play the game of if, Ilana. It gives me a headache, and worse, a heartache. No ifs, please."
...bits and pieces of broken dreams that kept piercing his troubled heart like shards of glass.
She stood and stepped slowly out of the boat into the water. It all seemed to take a very long time: the girl rising to her feet, the boat lurching, the astonished look on the rower's face as the girl simply walked off the boat and slid almost without a splash into the water, her dress ballooning up and covering her face, her hair billowing out behind her and then closing up like the petals of a flower as she sank.
I saw the sea move slowly back and forth upon the red earth like some breathing creature of vast and mysterious dimensions.
"O Heavenly Father, who hast filled the world with beauty; open, we beseech Thee, our eyes to behold Thy gracious hand in all Thy works..."
There was comfort in the kneeling and a sense of my exhausted self yielding to the embrace of a presence I could not understand but felt all about me as I did the wind and the sea.
"In Him is life," she said.
We went on longer and longer rides through villages from another time, past red-sand dunes and long beaches to a coast where the sea was wild. And one afternoon we stood on a cliff near stunted, oddly shaped dead trees and watched the sea roll against a shoreline of jagged rocks, saw the wind-blown swells that were the juncture of two colliding tides crashing and boiling with a furious violence, and I was awed and a little frightened.
It was a young horse. I rode slowly with my heart thumping in my ears, feeling the horse beneath me, its rolling motions, its powerful flanks. I smelled its heat and saw the quivering motions of its muscular skin and held its mane and felt the air on my face. When the farmer helped me from the saddle I felt I had grown wings for a long moment and flown.
I remember coming upon my mother in the kitchen one night and seeing her at the table, her head in her hands. She was crying. She did not see me and I walked quietly away.
You can't forget the bad things that are done to you by telling yourself that the world isn't all bad. We really can know only the people and things that touch us. Everything else is like words in a dictionary. We can learn them but they don't live deep inside us.
Nothing I write can be as astonishing as life, which is indeed the strangest story of all.
She has had two lifetimes of sorrow already. She is the kindest and gentlest of birds, the sort whose suffering is almost never noticed. We must care for her and be gentle with her.
Like all other images burned into me over the years.
Happiness seemed to dance in her eyes like tiny specks of sunlight on the surface of a sea.
I did not turn. It was like rising and stepping slowly out of the boat into the lake. Slowly and deliberately and who cares what they think or say. I could feel them all looking at me as I opened the door and went out of the room and closed the door behind me.
I only wanted to say a few words, I said. That's all.
Say them, my love. That's what we came all this way to hear. Say them. We're listening to you.
I stood there, facing them, sunlight on my face.
I began to talk.
I wanted to say that I'm very frightened to be living in this world and I don't understand most of the things I see and hear and I don't know what will happen to me and the family I love.
She smiled. My brother and Jakob Daw didn't know it, she said softly, but they were possessed of a sacred discontent.
Be discontented with the world.
"I want to tell you a story. It's a strange story. It doesn't have an ending. But you might find it interesting anyway. It's a story about two birds and some horses on a beach far away. Are you listening, little Rachel? And it's about a door harp..."
My mother explained words to me in a special way. She would give me the present meaning of the words and a brief account of its origin. If she did not know its origin, she would look it up in the dictionary in the bedroom near my father's desk.
It was important for everyone to know all the time that they weren't alone, my aunt said.
My room turned cold again. I saw my breath on my window and wrote my name with my finger, using the penmanship I was learning in school. Illana Davita Chandal. My name written clearly on a window against the cold night.
A quality of intense power seemed to radiate from his fragility, from his hooded eyes and hoarse voice, from his occasional cough. I found myself often staring at him, fascinated, unable to take my eyes from his face.
I asked my mother what the word religious meant.
She said it came from an old word that meant to bind, to tie.
There is no feeling more terrible than loneliness, no feeling worse than the sensation of being locked inside your own heart.
"I am a writer of stories," he said quietly in his raspy voice. "A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life."
"Along the slope grew an unusual lilylike flower. Its outer leafy sepals were dark blue, its inner whorl of scented petals were pale blue, its stem was light purple."
And once again she turned and looked yearningly toward the cottage. She seemed to be measuring the steepness of the slope. Then the bird heard her murmur sadly, wearily, "I cannot endure the slope."
A long day in the sun on the margin of the sea.
He let me lead him into the water. He shivered with the cold and cried out as a wave broke too high against us and nearly knocked him off his feet. His face was white with fear. But I held onto him and soon the sea felt warm and we went deeper into the waves and I showed him how to ride the crests, how to anticipate the swells, how to jump as they billowed, what to do when they crash and came rushing toward us in a charging cascade of foaming water. We held hands and jumped up and down in the water, riding the waves.
"I would touch the surf. His ship was on this water and now I'm touching his ship."
He kissed me on my face and held me a long time. He was tall and strong and I loved him, my father, Michael Chandal.
"I don't like boats. Boats frighten me. People I love keep going away from me on boats."
"Forgive me. I do not like to play the game of if, Ilana. It gives me a headache, and worse, a heartache. No ifs, please."
...bits and pieces of broken dreams that kept piercing his troubled heart like shards of glass.
She stood and stepped slowly out of the boat into the water. It all seemed to take a very long time: the girl rising to her feet, the boat lurching, the astonished look on the rower's face as the girl simply walked off the boat and slid almost without a splash into the water, her dress ballooning up and covering her face, her hair billowing out behind her and then closing up like the petals of a flower as she sank.
I saw the sea move slowly back and forth upon the red earth like some breathing creature of vast and mysterious dimensions.
"O Heavenly Father, who hast filled the world with beauty; open, we beseech Thee, our eyes to behold Thy gracious hand in all Thy works..."
There was comfort in the kneeling and a sense of my exhausted self yielding to the embrace of a presence I could not understand but felt all about me as I did the wind and the sea.
"In Him is life," she said.
We went on longer and longer rides through villages from another time, past red-sand dunes and long beaches to a coast where the sea was wild. And one afternoon we stood on a cliff near stunted, oddly shaped dead trees and watched the sea roll against a shoreline of jagged rocks, saw the wind-blown swells that were the juncture of two colliding tides crashing and boiling with a furious violence, and I was awed and a little frightened.
It was a young horse. I rode slowly with my heart thumping in my ears, feeling the horse beneath me, its rolling motions, its powerful flanks. I smelled its heat and saw the quivering motions of its muscular skin and held its mane and felt the air on my face. When the farmer helped me from the saddle I felt I had grown wings for a long moment and flown.
I remember coming upon my mother in the kitchen one night and seeing her at the table, her head in her hands. She was crying. She did not see me and I walked quietly away.
You can't forget the bad things that are done to you by telling yourself that the world isn't all bad. We really can know only the people and things that touch us. Everything else is like words in a dictionary. We can learn them but they don't live deep inside us.
Nothing I write can be as astonishing as life, which is indeed the strangest story of all.
She has had two lifetimes of sorrow already. She is the kindest and gentlest of birds, the sort whose suffering is almost never noticed. We must care for her and be gentle with her.
Like all other images burned into me over the years.
Happiness seemed to dance in her eyes like tiny specks of sunlight on the surface of a sea.
I did not turn. It was like rising and stepping slowly out of the boat into the lake. Slowly and deliberately and who cares what they think or say. I could feel them all looking at me as I opened the door and went out of the room and closed the door behind me.
I only wanted to say a few words, I said. That's all.
Say them, my love. That's what we came all this way to hear. Say them. We're listening to you.
I stood there, facing them, sunlight on my face.
I began to talk.
I wanted to say that I'm very frightened to be living in this world and I don't understand most of the things I see and hear and I don't know what will happen to me and the family I love.
She smiled. My brother and Jakob Daw didn't know it, she said softly, but they were possessed of a sacred discontent.
Be discontented with the world.
"I want to tell you a story. It's a strange story. It doesn't have an ending. But you might find it interesting anyway. It's a story about two birds and some horses on a beach far away. Are you listening, little Rachel? And it's about a door harp..."
The Hundred Secret Senses - Amy Tan Quotes
That was the year both our heavens burned.
Later we all realized our heavens were not the same.
Too much happiness always overflows into tears of sorrow.
"You can never forget a thing. Well, let me tell you, your recollection of every last detail has nothing to do with memory. It's called holding a goddamn grudge."
I taught her what is worth listening to in this world: wind, thunder, horses galloping in the dust, pebbles falling in water. I taught her what is frightening to hear: fast footsteps at night, soft cloth slowly ripping, dogs barking, the silence of crickets.
And then I felt myself becoming smaller yet denser, about to be crushed by the weight of my own heart, as if the laws of gravity and balance had changed and I was now violating them. I stared once again at those sharp little stars, twinkling like fireflies. Only now they were splotched and melting, and the night heaven was tilting and whirling, too immense to hold itself up any longer.
Kwan said that people in the World of Yin were very bad about making appointments, because nobody used a calendar or a clock anymore. The best method was to watch the moon. That was why so many strange things happened when the moon was at its brightest, Kwan said: "Like porch light, telling your guests, welcome-welcome, come inside."
And that's when I feel the grief for what we've lost over the years: the excitement and wonder of being in the world at the same time and in the same place.
Yet I'm also afraid that the core of my being, stripped of its mail-order trappings, is no different from that of the tenth person who stands on the road wishing for someone to stop and single her out.
You can't stop people from wishing. They can't help trying. As long as they can see sky, they'll always want to go as high as they can.
"Too many years, too many years," she says, as if chanting.
"Of course I knew. In my heart, I knew all the time."
Are we born with blank hearts, waiting to be imprinted with any imitation of love?
So you see? He was already being bossy, making decisions for me. That's how I knew we were married. That's how he told me I do.
"Let him despise me, otherwise he won't leave. Make sure he is safe. Promise me this."
"Only now I no longer feel it is a vacuum for hopes or a backdrop for fears. I see what is so simple, so obvious. It holds up the stars, the planets, the moons, all of life, for eternity. I can always find it, it will always find me. It is continuous, light within dark, dark within light. It promises nothing but to be constant and mysterious, frightening and miraculous. And if only I can remember to look at the sky and wonder about this, I can use this as my compass. I can find my way through chaos no matter what happens. I can hope with all my soul, and the sky will always be there, to pull me up..."
I lift my baby into my arms. And we dance, joy spilling from sorrow.
Later we all realized our heavens were not the same.
Too much happiness always overflows into tears of sorrow.
"You can never forget a thing. Well, let me tell you, your recollection of every last detail has nothing to do with memory. It's called holding a goddamn grudge."
I taught her what is worth listening to in this world: wind, thunder, horses galloping in the dust, pebbles falling in water. I taught her what is frightening to hear: fast footsteps at night, soft cloth slowly ripping, dogs barking, the silence of crickets.
And then I felt myself becoming smaller yet denser, about to be crushed by the weight of my own heart, as if the laws of gravity and balance had changed and I was now violating them. I stared once again at those sharp little stars, twinkling like fireflies. Only now they were splotched and melting, and the night heaven was tilting and whirling, too immense to hold itself up any longer.
Kwan said that people in the World of Yin were very bad about making appointments, because nobody used a calendar or a clock anymore. The best method was to watch the moon. That was why so many strange things happened when the moon was at its brightest, Kwan said: "Like porch light, telling your guests, welcome-welcome, come inside."
And that's when I feel the grief for what we've lost over the years: the excitement and wonder of being in the world at the same time and in the same place.
Yet I'm also afraid that the core of my being, stripped of its mail-order trappings, is no different from that of the tenth person who stands on the road wishing for someone to stop and single her out.
You can't stop people from wishing. They can't help trying. As long as they can see sky, they'll always want to go as high as they can.
"Too many years, too many years," she says, as if chanting.
"Of course I knew. In my heart, I knew all the time."
Are we born with blank hearts, waiting to be imprinted with any imitation of love?
So you see? He was already being bossy, making decisions for me. That's how I knew we were married. That's how he told me I do.
"Let him despise me, otherwise he won't leave. Make sure he is safe. Promise me this."
"Only now I no longer feel it is a vacuum for hopes or a backdrop for fears. I see what is so simple, so obvious. It holds up the stars, the planets, the moons, all of life, for eternity. I can always find it, it will always find me. It is continuous, light within dark, dark within light. It promises nothing but to be constant and mysterious, frightening and miraculous. And if only I can remember to look at the sky and wonder about this, I can use this as my compass. I can find my way through chaos no matter what happens. I can hope with all my soul, and the sky will always be there, to pull me up..."
I lift my baby into my arms. And we dance, joy spilling from sorrow.
Kate Chopin
Desiree's Baby:
The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.
"My own Desiree: Come home to Valmonde; back to your mother who loves you. Come with your child."
A Pair of Silk Stockings:
A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes.
A man with keen eyes, who sat opposite to her, seemed to like the study of her small, pale face. It puzzled him to decipher what he saw there. In truth, he saw nothing-unless he were wizard enough to detect a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever.
A Respectable Woman:
His manner was as courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he made no direct appeal to her approval or even esteem.
-
The stronger the impulse grew to bring herself near him, the further, in fact, did she draw away from him. As soon as she could do so without an appearance of too great rudeness, she rose and left him there alone.
-
She knew there are some battles in life which a human being must fight alone.
The Awakening:
There was nothing subtle or hidden about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent: the spun-gold hair that comb nor confining pin could restrain; the blue eyes that were like nothing but sapphires; two lips that pouted, that were so red one could only think of cherries or some other delicious crimson fruit in looking at them.
-
Their freedom of expression was at first incomprehensible to her, though she had no difficulty in reconciling it with a lofty chastity which in the Creole woman seems to be inborn and unmistakable.
-
Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory impulses which impelled her.
A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,--the light which, showing the way, forbids it.
-
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
-
Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life--that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.
-
Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.
-
"First of all, the sight of the water stretching so far away, those motionless sails against the blue sky, made a delicious picture that I just wanted to sit and look at. The hot wind beating in my face made me think--without any connection that I can trace of a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean to the very little girl walking through the grass, which was higher than her waist. She threw out her arms as if swimming when she walked, beating the tall grass as one strikes out in the water. Oh, I see the connection now!"
-
"Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided."
-
As the devoted wife of a man who worshiped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams.
-
She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine, or like a first breath of freedom.
-
"Do me a favor, Robert," spoke the pretty woman at his side, almost as soon as she and Robert had started their slow, homeward way. She looked up in his face, leaning on his arm beneath the encircling shadow of the umbrella which he had lifted.
"Granted; as many as you like," he returned, glancing down into her eyes that were full of thoughtfulness and some speculation.
"I only ask for one; let Mrs. Pontellier alone."
"Tiens!" he exclaimed, with a sudden, boyish laugh. "Voila que Madame Ratignolle est jalouse!"
"Nonsense! I'm in earnest; I mean what I say. Let Mrs. Pontellier alone."
"Why?" he asked; himself growing serious at his companion's solicitation.
"She is not one of us; she is not like us. She might make the unfortunate blunder of taking you seriously."
-
Of late he had sometimes held away from her for an entire day, redoubling his devotion upon the next and the next, as though to make up for hours that had been lost. She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining.
-
But the night sat lightly upon the sea and the land. There was no weight of darkness; there were no shadows. The white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the mystery and the softness of sleep.
-
She took his arm, but she did not lean upon it. She let her hand lie listlessly, as though her thoughts were elsewhere--somewhere in advance of her body, and she was striving to overtake them.
-
When the voices of the bathers were heard approaching, Robert said good-night. She did not answer him. He thought she was asleep. Again she watched his figure pass in and out of the strips of moonlight as he walked away.
-
She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she then did.
-
She had never sent for him before. She had never asked for him. She had never seemed to want him before. She did not appear conscious that she had done anything unusual in commanding his presence. He was apparently equally unconscious of anything extraordinary in the situation. But his face was suffused with a quiet glow when he met her.
-
"We'd share it, and scatter it together," he said. His face flushed.
-
Robert was going to Mexico. She laid her spoon down and looked about her bewildered. He had been with her, reading to her all the morning, and had never even mentioned such a place as Mexico.
-
"How long will you be gone?"
"Forever, perhaps. I don't know. It depends upon a good many things."
"Well, in case it shouldn't be forever, how long will it be?"
"I don't know."
-
Robert's going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing.
-
She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that they concerned no one but herself.
-
She had resolved never to take another step backward.
-
If her talent had been ten-fold greater than it was, it would not have surprised him, convinced as he was that he had bequeathed to all of his daughters the germs of a masterful capability, which only depended upon their own efforts to be directed toward successful achievement.
-
Edna marveled, not comprehending. She herself was almost devoid of coquetry.
-
She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.
-
The story did not seem especially to impress Edna. She had one of her own to tell, of a woman who paddled away with her lover one night in a pirogue and never came back. They were lost amid the Baratarian Islands, and no one ever heard of them or found trace of them from that day to this. It was a pure invention. She said that Madame Antoine had related it to her. That, also, was an invention. Perhaps it was a dream she had had. But every glowing word seemed real to those who listened. They could feel the hot breath of the Southern night; they could hear the long sweep of the pirogue through the glistening moonlit water, the beating of birds' wings, rising startled from among the reeds in the salt-water pools; they could see the faces of the lovers, pale, close together, rapt in oblivious forgetfulness, drifting into the unknown.
-
He was growing old, and beginning to need rest and an imperturbed spirit. He did not want the secrets of other lives thrust upon him.
-
She was hungry for them--even a little fierce in her attachment. She did not want them to be wholly "children of the pavement," she always said when begging to have them for a space. She wished them to know the country, with its streams, its fields, its woods, its freedom, so delicious to the young. She wished them to taste something of the life their father had lived and known and loved when he, too, was a little child.
-
She wanted something to happen--something, anything; she did not know what.
-
...but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.
-
"Why do you love him when you ought not to?"
-
...she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said.
-
She felt as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to took upon and comprehend the significance of life, that monster made up of beauty and brutality.
-
His cheeks were the color of crushed grapes, and his dusky eyes glowed with a languishing fire.
-
"You know that I only live when I am near you."
-
There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning.
-
"I am destined to see you only by accident."
-
"No; I only think you cruel, as I said the other day. Maybe not intentionally cruel; but you seem to be forcing me into disclosures which can result in nothing; as if you would have me bare a wound for the pleasure of looking at it, without the intention or power of healing it."
-
"You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both."
-
"No matter how late; you will wait for me, Robert?"
-
Adele, pressing her cheek, whispered in an exhausted voice: "Think of the children, Edna. Oh think of the children! Remember them!"
-
The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
She went on and on. She remembered the night she swam far out, and recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end.
The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.
"My own Desiree: Come home to Valmonde; back to your mother who loves you. Come with your child."
A Pair of Silk Stockings:
A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes.
A man with keen eyes, who sat opposite to her, seemed to like the study of her small, pale face. It puzzled him to decipher what he saw there. In truth, he saw nothing-unless he were wizard enough to detect a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever.
A Respectable Woman:
His manner was as courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he made no direct appeal to her approval or even esteem.
-
The stronger the impulse grew to bring herself near him, the further, in fact, did she draw away from him. As soon as she could do so without an appearance of too great rudeness, she rose and left him there alone.
-
She knew there are some battles in life which a human being must fight alone.
The Awakening:
There was nothing subtle or hidden about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent: the spun-gold hair that comb nor confining pin could restrain; the blue eyes that were like nothing but sapphires; two lips that pouted, that were so red one could only think of cherries or some other delicious crimson fruit in looking at them.
-
Their freedom of expression was at first incomprehensible to her, though she had no difficulty in reconciling it with a lofty chastity which in the Creole woman seems to be inborn and unmistakable.
-
Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory impulses which impelled her.
A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,--the light which, showing the way, forbids it.
-
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
-
Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life--that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.
-
Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.
-
"First of all, the sight of the water stretching so far away, those motionless sails against the blue sky, made a delicious picture that I just wanted to sit and look at. The hot wind beating in my face made me think--without any connection that I can trace of a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean to the very little girl walking through the grass, which was higher than her waist. She threw out her arms as if swimming when she walked, beating the tall grass as one strikes out in the water. Oh, I see the connection now!"
-
"Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided."
-
As the devoted wife of a man who worshiped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance and dreams.
-
She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine, or like a first breath of freedom.
-
"Do me a favor, Robert," spoke the pretty woman at his side, almost as soon as she and Robert had started their slow, homeward way. She looked up in his face, leaning on his arm beneath the encircling shadow of the umbrella which he had lifted.
"Granted; as many as you like," he returned, glancing down into her eyes that were full of thoughtfulness and some speculation.
"I only ask for one; let Mrs. Pontellier alone."
"Tiens!" he exclaimed, with a sudden, boyish laugh. "Voila que Madame Ratignolle est jalouse!"
"Nonsense! I'm in earnest; I mean what I say. Let Mrs. Pontellier alone."
"Why?" he asked; himself growing serious at his companion's solicitation.
"She is not one of us; she is not like us. She might make the unfortunate blunder of taking you seriously."
-
Of late he had sometimes held away from her for an entire day, redoubling his devotion upon the next and the next, as though to make up for hours that had been lost. She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining.
-
But the night sat lightly upon the sea and the land. There was no weight of darkness; there were no shadows. The white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the mystery and the softness of sleep.
-
She took his arm, but she did not lean upon it. She let her hand lie listlessly, as though her thoughts were elsewhere--somewhere in advance of her body, and she was striving to overtake them.
-
When the voices of the bathers were heard approaching, Robert said good-night. She did not answer him. He thought she was asleep. Again she watched his figure pass in and out of the strips of moonlight as he walked away.
-
She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she then did.
-
She had never sent for him before. She had never asked for him. She had never seemed to want him before. She did not appear conscious that she had done anything unusual in commanding his presence. He was apparently equally unconscious of anything extraordinary in the situation. But his face was suffused with a quiet glow when he met her.
-
"We'd share it, and scatter it together," he said. His face flushed.
-
Robert was going to Mexico. She laid her spoon down and looked about her bewildered. He had been with her, reading to her all the morning, and had never even mentioned such a place as Mexico.
-
"How long will you be gone?"
"Forever, perhaps. I don't know. It depends upon a good many things."
"Well, in case it shouldn't be forever, how long will it be?"
"I don't know."
-
Robert's going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing.
-
She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that they concerned no one but herself.
-
She had resolved never to take another step backward.
-
If her talent had been ten-fold greater than it was, it would not have surprised him, convinced as he was that he had bequeathed to all of his daughters the germs of a masterful capability, which only depended upon their own efforts to be directed toward successful achievement.
-
Edna marveled, not comprehending. She herself was almost devoid of coquetry.
-
She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.
-
The story did not seem especially to impress Edna. She had one of her own to tell, of a woman who paddled away with her lover one night in a pirogue and never came back. They were lost amid the Baratarian Islands, and no one ever heard of them or found trace of them from that day to this. It was a pure invention. She said that Madame Antoine had related it to her. That, also, was an invention. Perhaps it was a dream she had had. But every glowing word seemed real to those who listened. They could feel the hot breath of the Southern night; they could hear the long sweep of the pirogue through the glistening moonlit water, the beating of birds' wings, rising startled from among the reeds in the salt-water pools; they could see the faces of the lovers, pale, close together, rapt in oblivious forgetfulness, drifting into the unknown.
-
He was growing old, and beginning to need rest and an imperturbed spirit. He did not want the secrets of other lives thrust upon him.
-
She was hungry for them--even a little fierce in her attachment. She did not want them to be wholly "children of the pavement," she always said when begging to have them for a space. She wished them to know the country, with its streams, its fields, its woods, its freedom, so delicious to the young. She wished them to taste something of the life their father had lived and known and loved when he, too, was a little child.
-
She wanted something to happen--something, anything; she did not know what.
-
...but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.
-
"Why do you love him when you ought not to?"
-
...she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said.
-
She felt as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to took upon and comprehend the significance of life, that monster made up of beauty and brutality.
-
His cheeks were the color of crushed grapes, and his dusky eyes glowed with a languishing fire.
-
"You know that I only live when I am near you."
-
There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning.
-
"I am destined to see you only by accident."
-
"No; I only think you cruel, as I said the other day. Maybe not intentionally cruel; but you seem to be forcing me into disclosures which can result in nothing; as if you would have me bare a wound for the pleasure of looking at it, without the intention or power of healing it."
-
"You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both."
-
"No matter how late; you will wait for me, Robert?"
-
Adele, pressing her cheek, whispered in an exhausted voice: "Think of the children, Edna. Oh think of the children! Remember them!"
-
The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
She went on and on. She remembered the night she swam far out, and recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end.
William Butler Yeats
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
- No Second Troy
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- He wishes for the clothes of heaven
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand.
- The Stolen Child
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
- When you are old
And dance like a wave of the sea.
- The Fiddler of Dooney
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
- No Second Troy
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- He wishes for the clothes of heaven
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand.
- The Stolen Child
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
- When you are old
And dance like a wave of the sea.
- The Fiddler of Dooney
Roses Quotes
I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
- Emma Goldman
All the world glows with roses, roses, roses.
- Saul Chernihovsky
One may live without bread, not without roses.
- Jean Richepin
You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
- Thomas More
They are not long, the days of wine and roses.
- Ernest Dowson
Because it is sure of its beauty, the rose makes terrible demands on us.
- Alain Meilland
Truths and roses have thorns about them.
- Henry David Thoreau
...a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.
- Clive Bell
Oh, no man knows through what wild centuries roves back the rose. - Walter de la Mare
When love came first to Earth, the Spring spread rose-beds to receive him.
- Thomas Campbell
Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.
- George William Curtis
They that have roses never need bread.
- Dorothy Parker
A rose is a rose is a rose.
- Gertrude Stein
'Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
- Thomas Moore
How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
- Victor Hugo
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
- T. S. Eliot
A rose's rarest essence lives in the thorn.
- Rumi
But he that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.
- Emily Bronte
Loveliest of lovely things are they
On earth that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
- William Cullen Bryant
And I will make thee beds of roses
- Christopher Marlowe
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
- Song of Solomon
Let me bring you songs from the wood, poppies red & roses filled with summer rain, to heal the wounds and still the pain.
- Jethro Tull
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.
- Robert Frost
- Emma Goldman
All the world glows with roses, roses, roses.
- Saul Chernihovsky
One may live without bread, not without roses.
- Jean Richepin
You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
- Thomas More
They are not long, the days of wine and roses.
- Ernest Dowson
Because it is sure of its beauty, the rose makes terrible demands on us.
- Alain Meilland
Truths and roses have thorns about them.
- Henry David Thoreau
...a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.
- Clive Bell
Oh, no man knows through what wild centuries roves back the rose. - Walter de la Mare
When love came first to Earth, the Spring spread rose-beds to receive him.
- Thomas Campbell
Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.
- George William Curtis
They that have roses never need bread.
- Dorothy Parker
A rose is a rose is a rose.
- Gertrude Stein
'Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
- Thomas Moore
How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
- Victor Hugo
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
- T. S. Eliot
A rose's rarest essence lives in the thorn.
- Rumi
But he that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.
- Emily Bronte
Loveliest of lovely things are they
On earth that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
- William Cullen Bryant
And I will make thee beds of roses
- Christopher Marlowe
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
- Song of Solomon
Let me bring you songs from the wood, poppies red & roses filled with summer rain, to heal the wounds and still the pain.
- Jethro Tull
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.
- Robert Frost
William Faulkner Quotes
Now she hates me. I have taught her that, at least.
Pointless... like giving caviar to an elephant.
A gentleman can live through anything.
My, my. A body does get around.
Dear God, let me be damned a little longer, a little while.
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
And I reckon them that are good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad.
An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.
A dream is not a very safe thing to be near... I know; I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.
Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.
Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief.
She clung to that which had robbed her, as people do.
I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.
I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.
Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.
Perhaps they were right in putting love into books...
Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.
Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.
I will never lie again.
Caddy got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled. I hushed.
The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
'You men,' she says. 'You durn men.'
To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.
She wouldn't say what we both knew. 'The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true: is that it? But you know it is true now. I can almost tell you the day when you knew it is true. Why won't you say it, even to yourself?' She will not say it.
Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest.
You can't beat women anyhow and if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don't even try to.
How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.
Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.
Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.
She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.
A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.
I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.
You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.
He was looking at her from behind the smiling that wasn't smiling but was something you were not supposed to see beyond.
I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.
Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.
She wasn’t too big, heroic, what they call Junoesque. It was that there was just too much of what she was for any one human female package to contain, and hold: too much of white, too much of female, too much of maybe just glory, I don’t know: so that at first sight of her you felt a kind of shock of gratitude just for being alive and being male at the same instance with her in space and time, and then in the next second and forever after a kind of despair because you knew there would never be enough of any one male to match and hold and deserve her; grief forever after because forever after nothing less would ever do.
Love doesn't die; the men and women do.
Pointless... like giving caviar to an elephant.
A gentleman can live through anything.
My, my. A body does get around.
Dear God, let me be damned a little longer, a little while.
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
And I reckon them that are good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad.
An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.
A dream is not a very safe thing to be near... I know; I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.
Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.
Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief.
She clung to that which had robbed her, as people do.
I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.
I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.
Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.
Perhaps they were right in putting love into books...
Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.
Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.
I will never lie again.
Caddy got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled. I hushed.
The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
'You men,' she says. 'You durn men.'
To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.
She wouldn't say what we both knew. 'The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true: is that it? But you know it is true now. I can almost tell you the day when you knew it is true. Why won't you say it, even to yourself?' She will not say it.
Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest.
You can't beat women anyhow and if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don't even try to.
How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.
Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.
Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.
She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.
A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.
I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.
You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.
He was looking at her from behind the smiling that wasn't smiling but was something you were not supposed to see beyond.
I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.
Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.
She wasn’t too big, heroic, what they call Junoesque. It was that there was just too much of what she was for any one human female package to contain, and hold: too much of white, too much of female, too much of maybe just glory, I don’t know: so that at first sight of her you felt a kind of shock of gratitude just for being alive and being male at the same instance with her in space and time, and then in the next second and forever after a kind of despair because you knew there would never be enough of any one male to match and hold and deserve her; grief forever after because forever after nothing less would ever do.
Love doesn't die; the men and women do.
Carson McCullers Quotes
But all the time-no matter what she was doing-there was music.
Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.
While time, the endless idiot, runs screaming around the world.
The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen... Now that it was over there was only her heart beating like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.
I want - I want - I want - was all that she could think about - but just what this real want was she did not know.
Next to music beer was best.
Listen,” F. Jasmine said. “What I’ve been trying to say is this. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that I am I, and you are you? I am F. Jasmine Addams. And you are Berenice Sadie Brown. And we can look at each other, and touch each other, and stay together year in and year out in the same room. Yet always I am I, and you are you. And I can’t ever be anything else but me, and you can ever be anything else but you. Have you ever thought of that? And does it seem to you strange? "
I'm not explaining this right. What happened was this. There were these beautiful feelings and loose little pleasures inside me. And this woman was something like an assembly line for my soul. I run these little pieces of myself through her and I come out complete. Now do you follow me?
And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.
Each man described the mute as he wished him to be.
But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house... He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted... He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun—the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it.
All we can do is go around telling the truth.
But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of Him. How they have turned every word He spoke for their own vile ends.
The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.
The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear.
Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who—one word—love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror... he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith.
Wherever you look there’s meanness and corruption. This room, this bottle of grape wine, these fruits in the basket, are all products of profit and loss. A fellow can’t live without giving his passive acceptance to meanness. Somebody wears his tail to a frazzle for every mouthful we eat and every stitch we wear—and nobody seems to know. Everybody is blind, dumb, and blunt-headed—stupid and mean.
But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
In the face of brutality I was prudent. Before injustice I held my peace. I sacrificed the things in hand for the good of the hypothetical whole. I believed in the tongue instead of the fist. As an armor against oppression I taught patience and faith in the human soul I know now how wrong I was. I have been a traitor to myself and to my people. All that is not. Now is the time to act and to act quickly. Fight cunning with cunning and might with might.
There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.
All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.
Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.
While time, the endless idiot, runs screaming around the world.
The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen... Now that it was over there was only her heart beating like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.
I want - I want - I want - was all that she could think about - but just what this real want was she did not know.
Next to music beer was best.
Listen,” F. Jasmine said. “What I’ve been trying to say is this. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that I am I, and you are you? I am F. Jasmine Addams. And you are Berenice Sadie Brown. And we can look at each other, and touch each other, and stay together year in and year out in the same room. Yet always I am I, and you are you. And I can’t ever be anything else but me, and you can ever be anything else but you. Have you ever thought of that? And does it seem to you strange? "
I'm not explaining this right. What happened was this. There were these beautiful feelings and loose little pleasures inside me. And this woman was something like an assembly line for my soul. I run these little pieces of myself through her and I come out complete. Now do you follow me?
And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.
Each man described the mute as he wished him to be.
But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house... He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted... He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun—the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it.
All we can do is go around telling the truth.
But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of Him. How they have turned every word He spoke for their own vile ends.
The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.
The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear.
Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who—one word—love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror... he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith.
Wherever you look there’s meanness and corruption. This room, this bottle of grape wine, these fruits in the basket, are all products of profit and loss. A fellow can’t live without giving his passive acceptance to meanness. Somebody wears his tail to a frazzle for every mouthful we eat and every stitch we wear—and nobody seems to know. Everybody is blind, dumb, and blunt-headed—stupid and mean.
But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
In the face of brutality I was prudent. Before injustice I held my peace. I sacrificed the things in hand for the good of the hypothetical whole. I believed in the tongue instead of the fist. As an armor against oppression I taught patience and faith in the human soul I know now how wrong I was. I have been a traitor to myself and to my people. All that is not. Now is the time to act and to act quickly. Fight cunning with cunning and might with might.
There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.
All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.
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