Postcards Quotes

“The windows of his house shone in the darkness like squares of melting butter.”
― Annie Proulx, Postcards

“The ruddy liveliness, the quick rage of the eyes had faded. Here the skin was of the acetic whose neck is never marred by sucking kisses, the rigid facial planes of someone who spends time alone, untwisted by the squinting disguises of social life. His eyes did not change when women walked past.
It could be, he thought, that spark was finally dead. But he did not believe it.”
― Annie Proulx, Postcards

“She straightened up the trailer, ran the vacuum cleaner over the braided rug, spread a clean tablecloth and put fresh shelf paper in the kitchen cupboards. That was a little job. In the old days she would have stuffed the dirty paper in the stove and burned it. The electric stove was clean but it couldn’t dry socks, burn paper, raise bread or provide comfort. Cost money to run it. They called it progress.”
― Annie Proulx, Postcards

“I hated the slap on the back, the favors for friends, the internecine feuds and fumed oak skulduggery.”
― Annie Proulx, Postcards

“back”
― Annie Proulx, Postcards

“She straightened up the trailer, ran the vacuum cleaner over the braided rug, spread a clean tablecloth and put fresh shelf paper in the kitchen cupboards. That was a little job. In the old days she would have stuffed the dirty paper in the stove and burned it. The electric stove was clean but it couldn’t dry socks, burn paper, raise bread or provide comfort. Cost money to run it. They called it progress. By nine there was nothing”
― Annie Proulx, Postcards

“The luck was used up long ago, Ray. Bloods been running on empty since Loyal lit out. Damn him, sends his damn postcards every year or so but never lets us know where to write. You realize he don't even know Pa's dead? He don't know about the barn or what happened to Pa, he don't know Ma moved into the trailer or that you and me been married almost ten years or that Dub is rich in Miami. Don't know that Ma is lost. Sends his dumb bear postcards. How many of those bears have we got to see? What makes him think I want to hear from him? I don't care about his damn postcards. What now? Put some kind of notice in every paper in the country. "To Whom It May Concern. Jewell Blood lost in the snow on Riddle Mountain in New Hampshire, will her oldest son who hasn't been heard from for twenty years call home"? Is that what I should do? At least I know where to get hold of Dub. At least I can call him up. I got an address. I don't need to wait for a postcard.”
― Annie Proulx, Postcards

“But Loyal knew it wasn't anything he'd swallowed. It was the touching. Touching the woman. If it wasn't Billy it wouldn't be anyone else. The price for getting away. No wife, no family, no children, no human comfort in the quotidian unfolding of his life; for him, restless shifting from one town to another, the narrow fences of solitary thought, the pitiful easement if masturbation, lopsided ideas and soliloquies so easily transmuted to crazy mouthings. Up there beside the wall some kind of black mucky channel that ran from his genitals to his soul had begun to erode.”
― Annie Proulx, Postcards

“But he was fourteen miles away from home and half across a bridge, stepping gingerly on the brake to keep from hitting a burr-covered stray, before he figured it out. The dog. The dog was up in the field right where he'd told him to sit. Still waiting. Jesus Christ.”
― Annie Proulx, Postcards