All Quotes

"For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail."

"The monster cried out at the tower. The foghorn blew. The monster roared again. The foghorn blew. The monster opened its great toothed mouth, and the sound that came from it was the sound of the foghorn itself."

"All floated upon an evening carrousel, with fitful drifts of music wafting up here and there, and voices calling and murmuring from houses that were whitely haunted by television."

"On the whole, the change had done Huxley a share of good. Death made him a handsomer man to deal with. You could talk to him now and he’d have to listen."

"In touch! There’s a slimy phrase. Touch, hell. Gripped! Pawed, rather. Mauled and massaged and pounded by FM voices."

"“And what happened next?” “Silence happened next. God, it was beautiful.”"

"The telephone rang like a spoiled brat."

"Then I went in and shot the televisor, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little, but myself always going back, going back hoping and waiting until—bang!"

"“I believe,” said the first lady, “that our souls are in our hands. For we do everything to the world with our hands. Sometimes I think we don’t use our hands half enough; it’s certain we don’t use our heads.”"

"I’ve done a prideful thing, a thing more sinful than she ever done to me. I took the bottom out of her life."

"Hers was simply not a pew-shaped spine. “I just never had a reason ever to sit in a church,” she had told people. She wasn’t vehement about it. She just walked around and lived and moved her hands that were pebble-smooth and pebble-small. Work had polished the nails of those hands with a polish you could never buy in a bottle. The touching of children had made them soft, and the raising of children had made them temperately stern, and the loving of a husband had made them gentle."

"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage."

"THE OCTOBER COUNTRY …that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…"

"“Don’t these people ever get lonely?” “They’re used to it this way.” “Don’t they get afraid, then?” ”They have a religion for that.” “I wish I had a religion.” “The minute you get a religion you stop thinking,” he said. “Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.”"

"More murders are committed at ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature. Over one hundred, it’s too hot to move. Under ninety, cool enough to survive. But right at ninety-two degrees lies the apex of irritability, everything is itches and hair and sweat and cooked pork. The brain becomes a rat rushing around a red-hot maze. The least thing, a word, a look, a sound, the drop of a hair and—irritable murder."

"“It will only take a minute,” said Uncle Einar’s sweet wife. “I refuse,” he said. “And that takes but a second.”"

"“Oh,” said Brunilla, the cow-searcher. “A man with wings.” That was how she took it. She was startled, yes, but she had never been hurt in her life, so she wasn’t afraid of anyone, and it was a fancy thing to see a winged man and she was proud to meet him."

"Anna said, “Must they have a reason?” “No, not if they’re insane, no,” said Juliet. “In that case no reasons are necessary.”"

"He stood very straight and thought of nothing, or at least thought of thinking nothing."

"All the sadder that Stone, on the brink of his greatest work, turned one day and went off to live in a town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named The Past."

"The first thing you learn in life is you’re a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you’re the same fool."

"Well, I can’t waste a morning arguing with ten-year olds. Needless to say, I was ten myself once and just as silly."

"Oh, God, children are children, old women are old women, and nothing in between. They can’t imagine a change they can’t see."

"Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft."

"“No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns.”"

"Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another."

"“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Well.” She started pouring tea. “To start things off, what do you think of the world?” “I don’t know anything.” “The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you’re seventeen you know everything. When you’re twenty-seven if you still know everything you’re still seventeen.” “You seem to have learned quite a lot over the years.” “It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?” They both laughed quietly."

"Kindness and intelligence are the preoccupations of age. Being cruel and thoughtless is far more fascinating when you’re twenty."

"I’m not afraid. When you live as long as I’ve lived, you lose that, too. I never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because I’d never tried it. On my eightieth birthday I tried it. I can’t say I’m greatly excited over lobster still, but I have no doubt as to its taste now, and I don’t fear it. I dare say death will be a lobster, too, and I can come to terms with it."

"I’ve alway known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It’s essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don’t know."

"The sun did not rise, it overflowed."

"Grandma, he had often wanted to say, Is this where the world began? For surely it had begun in no other than a place like this. The kitchen, without doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple."

"And then, quite suddenly, summer was over."

"Next year’s going to be even bigger, days will be brighter, nights longer and darker, more people dying, more babies born, and me in the middle of it all."

"They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe."

"God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other."

"And the odd thing in Dad’s voice was the sound truth makes being said. The sound of truth, in a wild roving land of city or plain country lies, will spell any boy."

"And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That's you, Will, for my money."

"“‘For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ's birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.’”"

"If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that's long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people."

"Good to evil seems evil."

"Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts."

"The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them."

"Night had come on like the closing of a great but gentle eye."

"“War!” The thought stood in Sim’s brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived. But why? Wasn’t life short enough without fighting and killing?"

"Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man’s attitude when he has power."

"Beware, Charlie, old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft."

"“You remember winning, don’t you? A battle won, somewhere?” “No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns."

"“You really talk,” he said. “Compulsive,” I said.” “You’d make a lousy writer,” he said. “I never knew a writer yet who was a good talker.”"

"I’d hate to have you running hell, the lost souls would never get fried!"