“It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight. But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting. I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I didn’t care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lips. I ran.” (Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, page 371)
"A pretty girl in a hurry, her smooth hair swinging, shining-- just such a young woman as Nancy might have been. Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat." (Truman Capote's In Cold Blood,page 343)
Mother, you can still hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live I forgive you, Mother. I shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers The teeth at your bones are your own, the hunger is yours, forgiveness is yours. The sins of the fathers belong to you and to the forest and even to the ones in iron bracelets, and here you stand, remembering their songs. Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Think of the vine that curls from the small square plot that was once my heart. That is the only marker you need. Move on. Walk forward into the light.
This darknest Africa, where life roars by you like a flood and you grab whatever looks like it will hold you up. If you ask me, that's how it is and ever shall be. You stick out your elbows and hold yourself up.
The poisonwood bible pg. 517 by barbara kingslover
"I stand on deck with the Wireless Officer looking at the lights of America twinkling. He says to me, My God, that was a lovely night, Frank. Isn't this a great country altogether?
"The wind shifts, bringing with it the smell of roses, strong and sweet. Across the ravine, I see her in the dry crackle of leaves. A deer. She spies me and bolts through the trees. I run after her, not really giving chase. I'm running because I can, because I must. Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop."
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray, page 403
"Jesus. The bus is stopped. I've got to get off the bus. I'm getting off. I'm walking up the steps. I'm opening the door. I'm standing in the doorway. Okay. I'm here." (pg.319)
"Stormy believed that we are in this boot camp to learn, that if we don't persevere through all this world's obstacles and all its wounds, we won't earn our next life of great adventure. To be with her again, I will have the perseverance of a bulldog, but it seems to me that the training is unecessarily hard.
My name is Odd Thomas. I am a fry cook. I lead an unusual life, here in my pico mundo, my little world. I am at peace.
"Do you remember when Despereaux was in the dungeon, cupped in Gregory the jailer's hand, whispering a story in the old man's ear? I would like it very much if you thought of me as a mouse telling you a story, this story, with the whole of my heart, whispering it in your ear in order to save myself from the darkness, and to save you from darkness, too. 'Stories are light,' Gregory the jailer told Despereaux. Reader, I hope you have found some light here."
Diamonds colored like paper bags spin haplessly as the sky bleeds itself pale, the frigid air harboring death rattles wishing the day farewell, the past is an omnipotent oblivion, she will leave no trace of these moments, they will cease and nothing will be left but memories that too will fade and once faded leave nothing worth forgotten.
Only when I'm in bed, at dawn, listening to the cars passing below in the streets of Paris, my memory betrays me. That summer returns to me with all its memories. Anne, Anne, I repeat over and over again softly in the darkness. Something rises in me that I call by name, with closed eyes, Bonjour, tristesse.
“Yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.”
17 comments:
“It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight.
But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.
I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I didn’t care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lips.
I ran.” (Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, page 371)
"A pretty girl in a hurry, her smooth hair swinging, shining-- just such a young woman as Nancy might have been. Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat." (Truman Capote's In Cold Blood,page 343)
Mother, you can still hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live I forgive you, Mother. I shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers The teeth at your bones are your own, the hunger is yours, forgiveness is yours. The sins of the fathers belong to you and to the forest and even to the ones in iron bracelets, and here you stand, remembering their songs. Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Think of the vine that curls from the small square plot that was once my heart. That is the only marker you need. Move on. Walk forward into the light.
This darknest Africa, where life roars by you like a flood and you grab whatever looks like it will hold you up.
If you ask me, that's how it is and ever shall be. You stick out your elbows and hold yourself up.
The poisonwood bible pg. 517
by barbara kingslover
Jesse Beeson
"I stand on deck with the Wireless Officer looking at the lights of America twinkling. He says to me, My God, that was a lovely night, Frank. Isn't this a great country altogether?
'Tis"
Page 362
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
"The wind shifts, bringing with it the smell of roses, strong and sweet. Across the ravine, I see her in the dry crackle of leaves. A deer. She spies me and bolts through the trees. I run after her, not really giving chase. I'm running because I can, because I must.
Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop."
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray, page 403
"Jesus. The bus is stopped. I've got to get off the bus. I'm getting off. I'm walking up the steps. I'm opening the door. I'm standing in the doorway.
Okay.
I'm here." (pg.319)
The Burn Journals
"I had not seen Houston, never been south of Tennessee, but it was going to be different there. Rape would not follow me."
Lucky by Alice Sebold-pg.232
"Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behing him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat."
In Cold Blood byTruman Capote: Mr. Dewey walking away and leaving the past behind. PG. 343
"Stormy believed that we are in this boot camp to learn, that if we don't persevere through all this world's obstacles and all its wounds, we won't earn our next life of great adventure. To be with her again, I will have the perseverance of a bulldog, but it seems to me that the training is unecessarily hard.
My name is Odd Thomas. I am a fry cook. I lead an unusual life, here in my pico mundo, my little world. I am at peace.
Dean Koontz, "Odd Thomas," 383
"Do you remember when Despereaux was in the dungeon, cupped in Gregory the jailer's hand, whispering a story in the old man's ear?
I would like it very much if you thought of me as a mouse telling you a story, this story, with the whole of my heart, whispering it in your ear in order to save myself from the darkness, and to save you from darkness, too.
'Stories are light,' Gregory the jailer told Despereaux.
Reader, I hope you have found some light here."
Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux, Coda
Diamonds colored like paper bags spin haplessly as the sky bleeds itself pale, the frigid air harboring death rattles wishing the day farewell, the past is an omnipotent oblivion, she will leave no trace of these moments, they will cease and nothing will be left but memories that too will fade and once faded leave nothing worth forgotten.
"He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor."
Nick Caraway
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
pg. 83
Only when I'm in bed, at dawn, listening to the cars passing below in the streets of Paris, my memory betrays me. That summer returns to me with all its memories. Anne, Anne, I repeat over and over again softly in the darkness. Something rises in me that I call by name, with closed eyes, Bonjour, tristesse.
Francoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse, page 130.
“Yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.”
James Joyce
Ulysses
Final lines of the novel
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