A Confederate General from Big Sur / Dreaming of Babylon / The Hawkline Monster Quotes

“We could see the children's toys here and there, and we saw a game that the children had made themselves out of dirt, deer antlers and abalone shells, but the game was so strange that only children could tell what it was. Perhaps it wasn't a game at all, only the grave of a game.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur / Dreaming of Babylon / The Hawkline Monster

“She had a voice that made Pearl Harbor seem like a lullaby.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur / Dreaming of Babylon / The Hawkline Monster

“We stepped outside rather hurriedly and down the street to anonymous sanctuary among the buildings of San Francisco.
"Promise me till your dying day, you'll believe that a Mellon was a Confederate general. It's the truth. That God-damn book lies! There was a Confederate general in my family!"
"I promise," I said and it was a promise that was kept.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur / Dreaming of Babylon / The Hawkline Monster

“The truck looked just like a Civil War truck if they'd had trucks back in those times. But the truck ran, even though it didn't have a gas tank.

There was an empty fifty-gallon gasoline drum on the bed of the truck with a smaller gasoline can on top of it, and there was a syphon leading from that can to the fuel line.

It worked like this. Lee Mellon drove and I stayed on the back of the truck and made sure everything went all right with the syphon, that it didn't get knocked out of kilter by the motion of the truck.

We looked kind of funny going down the highway. I'd never had the heart to ask Lee Mellon what happened to the gas tank. I figured it was best not to know.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur / Dreaming of Babylon / The Hawkline Monster

“The fact that she had large firm breasts and was a Democrat made her the perfect woman for me.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur / Dreaming of Babylon / The Hawkline Monster

“She looked so old that she reminded me of a comic book hero of my childhood: The Heap. It was a World War I German pilot who was shot down and lay wounded for months in a bog and was slowly changed by mysterious juices into a ⅞ plant and ⅛ human thing. The Heap walked around like a mound of moldy hay and performed good deeds, and of course bullets had no effect on it. The Heap killed the comic book villains by giving them a great big hug, then instead of riding classically away into the sunset like a Western, The Heap lumbered off into the bog. That’s the way the old woman looked.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur / Dreaming of Babylon / The Hawkline Monster