Thomas Tryon > Quotes

“It is not easy to learn much about love, but one thing I discovered, that Lady Harleigh taught me: it is not whom you love that is important, but only that we love.”
― Thomas Tryon, Lady

“You can’t negate the ingrained imagination of a whole culture.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“This you must believe," she said, holding my gaze with an intent and profound expression, her eyes searching mine, "this you must absolutely believe if you will ever believe anything I shall ever tell you. It is not the coming together or the parting of two people that counts, or where or when, but those two people themselves, and in what manner they are joined. And if it is not with hate but with love, not with impatience but with understanding, and never with boredome but with interest, then nothing can be wrong with their being together, no matter how wrong it may seem to others. But those others, they do not count, they must not be permitted to count, for it is only between the two persons themselves that it must have meaning. It is not so difficult for people to arrange their lives sensibly if they behave sensibly, but to arrange their lives happily, that is a far, far different thing.”
― Thomas Tryon, Lady

“I wish I could help,” he murmured, with a turn to the Victrola handle. “We help one another by understanding one another: that is the only help there is.”
― Thomas Tryon, The Other

“It is like a deep pool, this imagination, and during the day it gets used up, like water, and when we sleep at night the water we have used during the day gets replaced. And if it is not replaced, if there is none to drink of, we are thirsty. It is from sleep that God gives us our strength and our power and our peace, do you see.”
― Thomas Tryon, The Other

“Nothin’ wrong with sentiment, if it’s what you truly feel. That’s the trouble with folks, they’re afraid to show what’s inside ’em.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“A woman always thinks it takes two to keep a secret, but I’m here to say I think it takes one.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“He drifted, dreamed; and dreamed some more.”
― Thomas Tryon, The Other

“A hermaphrodite. There was this poster at the drugstore this morning that said they’re going to have a real live hermaphrodite this year. All the way from Malta.”
― Thomas Tryon, The Other

“This atrocious child, whom even now she loved.”
― Thomas Tryon, The Other

“There’s things in a woman a man may never understand.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“The Bible says Eve was born of Adam’s rib, but he was born of the earth, so there was woman before there ever was man. She is not merely a mate, a life’s companion, a helpmeet; she is the moving force, the power.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“The shocked gloomy aftermath of death pressed a heavy hand upon the house.”
― Thomas Tryon, The Other

“Time put a patina of affection on yesteryear, and we tended to forget how appalling existence could be in those times, how long and how hard a man had to labor for his food, how difficult childbearing was, how few medicines and conveniences there were; how stern the realities of life.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“The house, though new to us when we purchased it in the spring, was almost three hundred years old, an uninhabited wreck we had chanced upon,”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“His heart's in the right place, but his tongue's an affliction.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“I loved the feel of the place: the tranquil, bucolic look, the sense of peace that spoke from every doorway, from each plot of well-tended grass, from every newly blooming garden. I loved the solidity and agelessness of it, of the passersby themselves, simple country people with simple country faces. There was a sense of veneration for that which had gone before, a rigid, disciplined effort to preserve things as they were—even, perhaps, a reluctance to acknowledge things as they are.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“(...) she rose and drifted about the room at length, clasping and unclasping her hands, pressing them to her temples as if she would seal in certain broodings which lay hidden there.”
― Thomas Tryon, The Other

“Viewed in the light of what occurred later, it was a fool's paradise, but I could not have known that then. Fool's paradise in those weeks was still Heart's Desire, and it seemed nothing could possible happen to spoil the idyll of our new existence. Above all, and very real, was a profound sense of belonging not only to my family but tot he villagers, to the countryside, and , though I did not till it, to the land.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“She seemed less my wife and more a woman in her own right, more self-reliant and independent. I felt I was looking at her in the round, so to speak, as one views a statue, from all sides, not merely a bas-relief with the figure partially imprisoned in the stone.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“Again I heard the cry, and I approached, circling the tree until I was looking at it from the opposite side. From gnarled roots to blasted top, the large trunk was split open, a dark wound where a bolt of lightning had rent it apart and fire had burned its center out, leaving it hollow. A mesh of thick vines grew upward from the base, crawling along the withered trunk, sutures trying to close the gaping wound where the sides lay back like flaps of charred flesh. The wind streamed through the gap, tugging the cuffs of my wet pants, brushing at the grass, tearing at the leaves of the new growth around the tree. Then I heard the cry again, and once more I froze, for I discovered the thing that voiced it, almost hidden behind the moving greenery.
I was looking at a human skull, and it was from behind the parted jaws that the screams came.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“God’s fine, but it’s old Mother Earth that’s the friend to man.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“We help one another by understanding one another. That is the only help there is. And the only hope as well.”
― Thomas Tryon

“Old Biddy slept the peaceful sleep she deserved, the sweet blessed rest that comes to all those who have reached the end of their lives; as Bid had now come to hers.”
― Thomas Tryon, The Adventures of Opal and Cupid

“I AWAKENED THAT MORNING to birdsong. It was only the little yellow bird who lives in the locust tree outside our bedroom window, but I could have wrung his neck, for it was not yet six and I had a hangover.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“Marryin’s good, keeps a body on his toes. Me, once I lost Clem, I never cared to wed again.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“What was here yesterday would be here tomorrow, and if it wasn’t it was no great matter. What mattered was the earth and what it could provide.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“Her mirror was her only intimate, and she wanted its reflection to be the single most important statement she cared to make.”
― Thomas Tryon, Crowned Heads

“greeting the Reverend, who was once again meek, as though this very day he might inherit the earth.”
― Thomas Tryon, Harvest Home

“But we shook hands", I told her fiercely. "He forgave me - I know he did."

"It's easy for the dead to forgive", she said, equally fierce. "But it's the living you've got to ask it of.”
― Thomas Tryon