The Book of the Dun Cow Quotes

“Sorrow spoken lends a little courage to the speaker.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“Her ballad did nothing to make the serpants lovely. Her ballad hid nothing of their dread. But the music itself spoke of faith and certainty; the melody announced the presence of God.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“A grudge may be strong. But a grudge isn't strength!”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“How many battles make a war?”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“Almost as evil as the stench was the silence. Senex, however poorly he had ended his rule, had always remembered the canonical crows. He sang them, to be sure, in a disoriented manner; but he did sing them, keeping his animals that way, banding them, unifying them.

But Cockatrice never crowed the canon. So under him the day lost its meaning and its direction, and the animals lost any sense of time or purpose. Their land became strange to them. A terrible feeling of danger entered their souls, of things undone, of treasures unprotected. They were tired all the day long, and at night they did not sleep. And it was a most pitiful sight to see, how they all went about with hunched shoulders, heads tucked in, limping here and there as if they were forever walking into an ill wind, and flinching at every sound as if the wind carried arrows.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“He went wordless, and wordless he sat beside her. He knew the size of her sorrow.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“How can the meek of the earth save themselves against the damnable evil which feeds on them?”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“Aye. He wills that I work his work in this place. Indeed. I am left behind to labor. Right
'And one day he may show his face beneath his damnable clouds to tell me what that work might be; what's worth so many tears; what's so important in his sight that is needs to be done this way...
'O my sons!'Chauntecleer suddenly wailed at the top of his lungs, a light flaring before it goes out: 'How much I want you with me!”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“But a good novel is first of all an event; as distinguished from the continuous rush of many sensations and the messy overlapping experiences of our daily lives, it is a composed experience in which all sensations are tightly related, for which there is a beginning and an ending, within which the reader’s perceivings and interpretations are shaped for a while by the internal integrity of all the elements of the narrative.”
― Wangerin Jr., Walter, The Book of the Dun Cow

“The dose makes the poison.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“Her eyes were liquid with compassion—deep, deep, as the earth is deep. Her brow knew his suffering and knew, besides that, worlds more. But the goodness was that, though this wide brow knew so much, yet it bent over his pain alone and creased with it.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“Long lives or short, what does it matter? They lived in a world of their father’s love. Any time is some time, and some time is time enough. Under the everlasting stars all time is short, however long we live. And was is a very fine memory.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations

“Under her breath she prayed blessings upon the heads of the Pins continually. Continually? Why, she had never ceased to pray for them since their birth. With words she was constructing a defense around them, against danger, against disease, against ill will, against misfortune. All alone, in the secret of her soul, she was building their peace and their good growth—and that with words.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“The Coop was empty. Someone took advantage of its emptiness. A small hole existed between two floorboards. Through that hole there slipped a silent, long, long, black nose, and after that a head like a finger pointing: eyes as narrow as needles; a body like black liquid; a tail which came and came and never ceased to slide out of the hole. Dark, smooth, and as quiet as this one was, yet he was no mere shadow. While the crow of grief rolled out over the countryside, Ebenezer Rat crushed and swallowed one more egg.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“: “Behold the Rooster who suffers much more than he must. Ah, Chauntecleer, Chauntecleer. Why do you suffer today and tomorrow?” oozed the compassionate voice. “Curse God. Curse him, and all will be done. Or, lest you forget the truth of things, remember: I am Wyrm. And I am here.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“WELL, THEN SHAG IT, YOU SUITCASE! GET OVER HERE!”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“And so descends the evening on the two Hens hugging among the juniper, the sky as purple as a bruise in the universe.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations