Elaine Mccain > Elaine's Quotes

“The Kikuyu, when left to themselves, do not bury their dead, but leave them above ground for the hyenas and vultures to deal with. The custom had always appealed to me, I thought that it would be pleasant thing to be laid out to the sun and the stars, and to be so promptly, neatly, and openly picked and cleansed; to be made one with Nature and become a common component of a landscape.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“I have conquered them all, but I am standing amongst graves”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue, and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my own arm than it gave up the ghost. It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the duet between the turquoise and the 'nègre' - that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native's skin - that had created the life of the bracelet.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“He conveyed a strange impression of being in safety, and completely secure. He had a courteous little manner with him, and smiled and nodded, as I pointed out the hills and the tall trees to him, as if he were interested in everything, and incapable of surprise at anything. I wondered if this consistency was produced by an entire ignorance of the evil of the world, or by a deep knowledge and acceptance of it.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“There are things which cannot be carried through even with the good will of everybody concerned”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“The views were immensely wide. Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequealled nobility.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“Here I am, where I ought to be.”
― Isak Dinesen ( Karen Blixen ), Out of Africa

“In a world of fools, I was, I think, to him one of the greater fools.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find out that it is the same in all her music.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“It is a sad hardship and slavery to people who live in towns, that in their movements they know of one dimension only; they walk along the line as if they were led on a string. The transition from the line to the plane into the two dimensions, when you wander across a field or through a wood, is a splendid liberation to the slaves, like the French Revolution. But in the air you are taken into the full freedom of the three dimensions; after long ages of exile and dreams the homesick heart throws itself into the arms of space.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“The Cicada sing an endless song in the long grass, smells run along the earth and falling stars run over the sky, like tears over a cheek. You are the privileged person to whom everything is taken. The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“Up in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“There is a particular hapiness in giving a man whom you like very much, good food that you have cooked yourself.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

“God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest.”
― Isak Dinesen

“It's an odd feeling-farewell-there is some envy in it. Men go off to be tested for courage and if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without, for how well we can endure loneliness.”
― Isak Dinesen

“Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me a chance to do my best. ”
― Isak Dinesen, Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny

“I think what Vincent wanted was for me to find him in his words, even between the lines. Then he wanted me to write him a story he could live in just as I had once told him I might.”
― Elizabeth Stone, A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from her Student

“In all the photos I see the boy I once knew and the man he became, a flawed but decent man whom I grew to care about in a more complicated way than I had ever cared about the boy.”
― Elizabeth Stone, A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from her Student

“When you're a teacher, some students burst out at you immediately, most emerge gradually, and a few don't want you to see them at all.”
― Elizabeth Stone, A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from her Student

“Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ”
― Elizabeth Stone

“So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty.”
― Haniel Long