The Yearling Quotes

“Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks...Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life...I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.

—Penny Baxter”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“He watched the sun rise beyond the grape arbor. In the thin golden light the young leaves and tendrils of the Scuppernong were like Twink Weatherby's hair. He decided that sunrise and sunset both gave him a pleasantly sad feeling. The sunrise brought a wild, free sadness; the sunset, a lonely yet a comforting one. He indulged his agreeable melancholy until the earth under him turned from gray to lavender and then to the color dried corn husks.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“He was addled with April. He was dizzy with Spring. He was as drunk as Lem Forrester on a Saturday night.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“He would be lonely all his life. But a man took it for his share and went on.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“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 wild animals seemed less predatory to him than people he had known.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“This, then, was hunger. This was what his mother had meant when she had said, "We'll all go hongry." He had laughed, for he had thought he had known hunger, and it was faintly pleasant. He knew now that it had been only appetite. This was another thing.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Penny's bowels yearned over his son. He gave him something more that his paternity. He found that the child stood wide-eyed and breathless before the miracle of bird and creature, of flower and tree, of wind and rain and sun and moon, as he had always stood. And if, on a soft day in April, the boy had prowled away on his boy's business, he could understand the thing that had drawn him. He understood, too, its briefness.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Ma Baxter rocked complacently. They were all pleased whenever she made a joke. Her good nature made the same difference in the house as the hearth-fire had made in the chill of the evening.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“I'm eating' it quick... but I'll remember it a long time.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“You kin tame arything, son, excusin’ the human tongue.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“You do somethin' for me? Go tell Twink I'll meet her at the old grove Tuesday about dusk-dark."

Jody was frozen.

He burst out, "I won't do it. I hate her. Ol' yellow-headed somethin'.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Jody said, "Ma, you're shore good."

"Oh, yes. When it's rations."

"Well, I'd a heap ruther you was good about rations and mean about other things."

"Oh, I be mean, be I?"

"Only about jest a very few things," he soothed her.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“They listened with flattering attention. He was filled with enthusiasm. He began at the beginning and tried to tell it as he thought Penny would do. Half-way through, he looked down at the cake. He lost interest in the account.

"Then Pa shot him," he ended abruptly.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“... the human heart is allus the same. Sorrer strikes the same all over. Hit makes a different kind o' mark in different places.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“He had perhaps been bruised too often. The peace of the vast aloof scrub had drawn him with the beneficence of its silence. Something in him was raw and tender. The touch of men was hurtful upon it, but the touch of pines was healing.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“A mark was on him from the day's delight, so that all his life, when April was a thin green and the flavor of rain was on his tongue, an old wound would throb and a nostalgia would fill him for something he could not quite remember.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'taint easy.

--Penny Baxter to his son, Jody”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“He lay down on his pallet and drew the fawn down beside him. He often lay so with it in the shed, or under the live oaks in the heat of the day. He lay with his head against its side. its ribs lifted and fell with its breathing. It rested its chin on his hand. It had a few short hairs there that prickled him. He had been cudgeling his wits for an excuse to bring the fawn inside at night to sleep with him, and now he had one that could not be disputed. He would smuggle it in and out as long as possible, in the name of peace.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“She drew gallantry from men as the sun drew water. Her pertness enchanted them. Young men went away from her with a feeling of bravado. Old men were enslaved by her silver curls. Something about her was forever female and made all men virile.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Grandma Hutto’s flower garden was a bright patchwork quilt thrown down inside the pickets.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Well, son, you cain’t go thru life chunkin’ things at all the ugly women you meet.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Don't go gittin faintified on me.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“He wrote:

Dear ollever; yor ol twinkk has dun gode up the rivver. im gladd. yor friend jody.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Dogs could die, and bears and deer and other people. That was acceptable, because it was remote. His father could not die. The earth might cave in under him in one vast sink-hole and he could accept it. But without Penny, there was no earth. Without him there was nothing.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“They were no more than conscious that she spoke to them. They had
seen a thing that was unearthly. They were in a trance from the strong spell of
its beauty. •11•”
― Rawlings Marjorie Kinnan, The Yearling

“Eulalie in a remote fashion belonged to him, Jody, to do with as he pleased, if only to throw potatoes at her.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

“Living was no longer the grief behind him, but the anxiety ahead.”
― Rawlings Marjorie Kinnan, The Yearling