Kindle Notes & Highlights
you lift enough rocks, you will finally discover a nest of scorpions,
A boy’s life, like a bird’s life, is not what is generally assumed. For bird examples, watch the whitethroats gorging in the bramble patches, the warblers gluttoning among the blackberries, the blackcaps swinging off the rose hips, all in a panic to get fat before the summer ends. I, for my part, was forever in a fret lest my daddy die like my mother and leave me with no one to care for me, no one to save me from my cheeky nature, my mimicking, my fear of strangers on the road or in the woods at night, tramps, scamps, hermits, men who put paper noses on their face to frighten boys.
They consented to serve but were ashamed to obey. They had begun to treat their masters as the unjust usurpers of their rights.
Democracies and monarchies, it does not matter—the world is filled with poor men tortured by the state.
America, everyone is in a state of agitation: some to attain power, others to grab wealth, and when they cannot move, they rock.
“You are an American now, and you must take the rough with the smooth.”
