Poets From The United States

"He had left home to get away, not to go toward anything. There was no greater freedom than that."

"He could afford to be generous, since he didn't have to pay for it himself. Most virtues were like that. People could take pride in how virtuous they were, but the fact was that as soon as virtue got expensive or inconvenient, it was amazing how fast it gave way to practical concerns."

"You spend your whole life grieving for those who haven't died yet."

"When people say perhaps it's cause they're lying. Either they don't believe the thing they're saying, or they do believe it only they don't want to admit they do."

"Perhaps I'm hiding from myself. Perhaps I don't want to be what I'm supposed to be. Or perhaps I don't want to keep living the life I already started to live."

"My own feeling is that human happiness is a very random thing, and bestows itself willy-nilly, and there's not much deserving about the matter."

"“You speak metaphorically, I hope,” said Peggy. “I hope not,” said Becca. “Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.”"

"“A liar sees lies,” said Taleswapper. “Even when they aren’t there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can’t stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be.”"

"You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they'll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don't change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully."

"Do you speak Scorn and Mockery to everyone? Or just to your betters?"

"Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn't quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?"

"And I says back to him, “Calvin, sounding like an educated man don’t make you educated,” and he says back to me, “I'd rather be ignorant and sound educated than be educated and sound ignorant,” and I said, “Why?” and he says to me, “Because if you sound educated then nobody ever tests you to find out, but if you sound ignorant they never stop.”"

"I don't know why people who got what they need to be happy don't just go ahead and be happy."

"In a way, he lost some of himself, some of his knack, and therefore some of the choices he might have had in life. But in losing those, he gained so much more freedom, so much more power, that he was clear winner in the bargain."

"Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old."

"Last night Alvin just got mad, which she said would only guarantee that he'd stay stupid."

"You can't change what you don't understand."

"I've learned much, Father, and this above all: that no station in life is above any other, if it's occupied by someone with a good heart."

"Perhaps you don't desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you."

"Some men are great enough that they can love a whole woman, and not just part of her."

"'A woman's wisdom is her gift to women,'" Peggy quoted. "'Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to God.'"

"Peggy chose her words to be true, and therefore beautiful, and therefore good."

"He'd undone all he could. You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can't call back the futures that your bad decisions lost. He didn't need no philosopher to tell him that."

"The Maker is the one who is part of what he makes."

"And then he realized that he could never make anything out of the Unmaker, could never make the Unmaker do or be anything because it was only Undoing and Unbeing. It wasn't the Unmaker he needed to call to, it was all the living things around him, the trees, the grass, the earth, the air itself. It was the greensong that he needed to restore."

"Didn't he know that when you work to destroy, you invite the Destroyer?"

"That's how it goes within a family. You think you know each other so well, and so you don't bother hardly getting to know each other at all."

"She don't set no store to see a king. Her pa a king back in Africa, and they shoot him dead. Them Portuguese slavers show her what it mean to be a king—it mean you die quick like everybody, and spill blood red like everybody, and cry out loud in pain and scared—oh, fine to be a king, and fine to see one. Do them White folk believe this lie?"

"Slavery, that was a kind of alchemy for such White folk, or so they reckoned. They calculated a way of turning each bead of a Black man's sweat into gold and each moan of despair from a Black woman's throat into the sweet clear sound of a silver coin ringing on the money-changer's table. There was buying and selling of souls in that place. Yet there was nary a one of them who understood the whole price they paid for owning other folk."

"At night in his own bed, Alvin listened to the distant greensong, still warm and beautiful, still bright and hopeful even though the forest was getting so sparse, even though the future was so dim. Cause there's no fear of future in the song of life, just the ever-joyful present moment. That's all I want right now, thought Alvin. The present moment, which is good enough."

"What the White man had won with so much blood and dishonesty was not the living land of the Red man, but the corpse of that land. It was decay that the White man won. It would turn to dust in his hands, Alvin knew it."

"We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death."

"“I want to know how many years I got.” “Many,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Or few. All that matters is what you do with however many years you have.”"

"“Black with hate,” said Becca. “You are gathering your people with hate.” “Can you imagine conducting a war with love?” asked Ta-Kumsaw. “That’s a reason to refuse to make war at all,” she said gently."

"Wasn't that their natural right, to know the truth so as to be able to let the truth lead them to do good or evil, as they chose?"

"As he had so many times before, Taleswapper addressed a few silent words to God, which always came down to this question: Why do you put us to so much trouble, when it all comes to naught in the end?...And, as usual, God had nothing much to say to Taleswapper when his questioning was done."

"We've seen the worst that men can do, pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don't mean that someday we won't see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can't we?"

"The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight."

"“We don’t go to Fort Chicago,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “We go to the holy place.” “A church?” asked Alvin. Ta-Kumsaw laughed. “You White people, when you make a place holy you build walls so nothing of the land can get in. Your god is nothing and nowhere, so you build a church with nothing alive inside, a church that could be anywhere, it doesn’t matter—nothing and nowhere.” “Well what does make a place holy?” asked Alvin. “Because that’s where the Red man talks to the land, and the land answers.”"

"The fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place."

"Very bad thing, killing little boy. But maybe Red man knows about whisky-Red, very thirsty, making crazy. Not like killing man to take his house or his woman or his land, like White man all the time."

"What a silly god, he makes everybody born bad to go to burning hell. Why so mad? All his fault!"

"Road poured out into a place of meadows and a few White man's buildings. Lots of wagons. Horses posted and tied, grazing on the meadow grass. Sounds of metal hammers ringing, chopping of axes in the wood, screech of saws going back and forth, all kinds of White-man forest-killing sounds. A White man's town."

"He didn't know if he had the right or not. Didn't know if he was taking like a Red man, just what the land offered, or stealing like a White man, murdering whatever it pleased him to kill."

"Lolla-Wossiky is left like a White man then. Cut off from the land. Ground crunching underfoot. Branches snagging. Roots tripping. Animals running away."

"She can't help her red skin, and she isn't heathen. In fact, she's a Baptist, which is almost like being Christian, only louder."

"What is the White man? What does he do? The White man is like a human being, but he crushes all other living things under his feet. Then why, O Ta-Kumsaw, when I look into your heart, why is it that you do not wish to hurt the White man, that you do not wish to kill the White man? The White man doesn't know the evil that he does. The White man doesn't feel the peace of the land, so how can he tell the little deaths he makes? I can't blame the White man. But I can't let him stay. So when I make him leave this land, I won't hate him."

"The White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man's way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn't need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all."

"When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth."

"No, no, no, Hooch told himself silently. Getting even don't amount to nothing in this world. Getting even only gets you behind. The best revenge is to get rich enough to make them all call you sir, that's how you get even with these boys."