The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1 Quotes

“There is a popular saying, “More rare than pine is the smell of pining”—which is rare indeed, for there are few pine trees in this part of the Ozarks.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“This Man, our Man, was not even of any kinship to those ancient folk of Stay More; He was a furriner, from distant parts, an outlander, a newcomer, even if He had lived in Holy House longer than all but the oldest roosterroaches could remember. Doc Swain was one of these: he could remember, as a child, nearly two years before, watching Man move into the old Stay More Hotel, which had once been the home for human Ingledews before becoming a hotel, and had been abandoned for years before Man moved into it and installed the Fabulous Fridge and the pantry and breadbasket and grocery sack and other good things. Although the Man did not dress like the ancient Men of Stay More, or talk like Them, or practice Their customs, He was still Man, and the only Man we had. He might not be as Almighty as the Crustians thought He was, but He was the Lord.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“The Golden Age of Stay More would remain only the subject of endless legends and embellished conjectures among the tale-telling roosterroaches until after The Bomb, when according to Crustian belief, Joshua Crust Himself would be resurrected from the west and take everyone in a Rapture to live on the right hand of Man in the perfect Ozark Golden Age of yore.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“On any given night, after breakfast, a couple dozen or more members of this Loafer’s Court could be found lolling around Doc Swain and Squire Hank, listening to them holding forth on the ancient stories of Stay More, swapping tall tales, and waxing prophetic about their favorite subject, which was The Bomb, particularly the irreligious, anti-Rapture view of it held by many, who did not believe that Man would save the righteous from that great explosion but rather that Man himself would perish in the holocaust, and the roosterroaches would have the onerous responsibility of inheriting the earth, something they did not particularly desire.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“Doc Colvin Swain was the seventh son of a seventh son, which Ozark tradition indicates as infallibly as the daily setting of the sun that he was destined to become a physician, even in spite of himself.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“The ancestor of this Woman, Sam’s Woman, had been a proprietress of this merchandise store, which occupied the central room of her dwelling, her bedroom and sitting room occupying one side of Parthenon. The ancestor-Woman, a fabled demigoddess named Latha, had later abandoned Parthenon, and it had remained unoccupied through countless generations of roosterroaches, just as all the other buildings of Stay More were uninhabited and most of them disappearing through rot, neglect, windstorm and rainstorm, fire and vandalism.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“In certain isolated coves of the Ozark Mountains, up until the most recent times, the folk (both humanfolk and roosterroachfolk) still celebrated, particularly in May as the earth began to grow, what can only be called Cerealia, rites in honor of Ceres, the godhead above the god of Roman Man, or rather goddesshead: Mother Earth herself, protectress of all the fruits of the earth and from whom the sacred word “cereal” comes. The young of Man had often conducted their “play-party” as a form of Cerealia, and the roosterroaches, following Man in all things, did likewise.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“Why this prudery? Being already possessed of the uncommon wisdom of the Ingledews, which he refined through countless hours of meditation, Sam Ingledew understood in time that the essential reason for all sexual modesty is to give sex mystery, without which it would be dull, commonplace, obligatory, and uninviting. Modesty makes sex hard-to-get and therefore challenging, and therefore worthy of all one’s waking obsessions and half of one’s dreams. If it were otherwise, the generations would not generate.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“So in his maturity—he was no longer young, but had lived a full circuit of the earth around the sun—he had dropped his Crustian name and chosen to call himself Gregor Samsa Ingledew, the full meaning of which was known, or appreciated, only by himself.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“The ways of Man are inscrutable. Man giveth, and Man taketh away. Blessed be the Name of Man (though Brother Chidiock Tichborne, who had a fine old name himself, had to admit that he did not know the name of his Man, nor of the Woman either).”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“Man had a habit of routinely taking up and firing a revolver at the roosterroaches who dwelt in His house, with westerly accuracy depending on how much He had had to drink. Other ministers before Brother Tichborne had determined that this shooting and westering of chosen roosterroaches was both a form of punishment and an expression of Man’s love, and therefore the shooting, or the act of being shot, was called not a westering but a Rapture.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1