Andrew > Andrew's Quotes

“Martin got up and brushed off the seat of his pants with his hat. He put his hat on his head and started back toward the path. For when you woke from a long dream, into the new morning, then try as you might you couldn't not hear, beyond your door, the sounds of the new day, the drawer opening in your father's bureau, the bang of a pot, you couldn't not see, through your trembling lashes, the stripe of light on the bedroom wall. Boys shouted in the park, on a sunny tree-root he saw a cigar band, red and gold. One of these days he might find something to do in a cigar store, after all he still knew his tobacco, you never forgot a thing like that. But not just yet. Boats moved on the river, somewhere a car horn sounded, on the path a piece of broken glass glowed in a patch of sun as if at any second it would burst into flame. Everything stood out sharply: the red stem of a green leaf, horse clops and the distant clatter of a pneumatic drill, a smell of riverwater and asphalt. Martin felt hungry: chops and beer in a little he remembered on Columbus Avenue. But not yet. For the time being he would just walk along, keeping a little out of the way of things, admiring the view. It was a warm day. He was in no hurry.”
― Steven Millhauser, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

“He lay down beside the fawn. He put one arm across its neck. It did not seem to him that he could ever be lonely again.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“The trouble with education is,' said Jimmy cheerfully, 'that we always read everything when we're too young to know what it means. And the trouble with life is that we're always too busy to reread it later. There's more sense in books, Cicily, than you'd really believe. Though, of course, they don't teach you anything vital that you can't learn for yourself.”
― Margaret Ayer Barnes, Years of Grace

“Son, this is a Washington, D.C. kind of lie. It's when the other person knows you're lying, and also knows you know he knows.”
― Allen Drury, Advise and Consent

“Nineteen months ago, he mourned, partridges were here. Nineteen months ago the open pine forest was compassionate. What rare concentrated tragedies will have occurred within another nineteen months—not here, for this place has bred a tragedy greater than any recorded in the Nation's past—but elsewhere, all over the South, through back roads and on wharves and in legislative rooms, in foundries which rust because the fires have gone out?”
― MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville

“In a flash of self-comprehension, Roger Brevard knew that he would never, as he had hped, leave Salem. He was abstemious man, one of a family of long lives, and he would linger here, increasingly unimportant, for a great while, an old man in new epochs, isolated among strange people and prejudices. Whatever the cause - the small safety or an inward flaw - he had never been part of the corporate sweating humanity where, in the war of spirit and flesh, the vital rewards and accomplishments were found.”
― Joseph Hergesheimer

“The wisdom lay in this–that here she must remain Manchu, Chinese; any attempt to become a part of this incomprehensible country, any effort to involve herself in its mysterious acts or thought, would be disastrous. She must remain calm, unassertive, let the eternal Tao take its way.”
― Joseph Hergesheimer, Java Head

“In a flash of self-comprehension, Roger Brevard knew that he would never, as he had hoped, leave Salem. He was abstemious man, one of a family of long lives, and he would linger here, increasingly unimportant, for a great while, an old man in new epochs, isolated among strange people and prejudices. Whatever the cause - the small safety or an inward flaw - he had never been part of the corporate sweating humanity where, in the war of spirit and flesh, the vital rewards and accomplishments were found.”
― Joseph Hergesheimer, Java Head

“Books are, let's face it, better than everything else.”
― Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree

“I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Maybe great sorrow or guilt is simply to be accepted as absolute, like revelation. My iniquity/punishment is greater than I can bear. In the Hebrew, her father said, that one word had two meanings and we chose one of them, which may make it harder for us to understand why the Lord would have pardoned Cain and protected him, and let him go on with his life, marry, have a son, build a city. His crime was his punishment, which had to mean he wasn't such a villain after all. She might mention this to Jack sometime, if it ever seemed to her a conversation had arrived at a point where she could dare, could summon delicacy enough, to compare him to Cain. She laughed at herself. What a thought.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Home

“Some say they don’t really know what they are looking for in life. This might be because, instead of getting in touch with how they feel, they have led their lives according to other people’s expectations. Live your life not to satisfy others, but to fulfill what your heart desires.”
― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World

“When Mama first explained to me what a hurricane was, I thought that all the animals ran away, that they fled the storms before they came, that they put their noses to the wind days before and knew...And maybe the bigger animals do. But now I think that other animals, like the squirrels and the rabbits, don't do that at all. Maybe the small don't run.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“In Mythology, I am still reading about Medea and the quest for the Golden Fleece. Here is someone that I recognize. When Medea falls in love with Jason, it grabs me by the throat. I can see her. Medea sneaks Jason things to help him: ointments to make him invincible, secrets in rocks. She has magic, could bend the natural to the unnatural. But even with all her power, Jason bends her like a young pine in a hard wind; he makes her double in two. I know her.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“When the baby is dead and my wife has recovered I imagine we'll get a divorce. Then I'll really be a free man now that I've been fired and all, and that's surely what I've been dreaming about for years. Funny, I'm not particularly happy about it”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, A Personal Matter