Robert Newton Peck · 160 pages
Rating: (8.3K votes)
“Never miss a chance...to keep your mouth shut.”
“Somehow, the Good Lord don't want to see no man start a cold morning with just black coffee.”
“Aren't you a Republican? Just about everyone is in the whole town of Learning."
"No, I'm not a Republican. And I'm not no Democrat. I'm not nothing."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not allowed to vote."
"Me either. You have to be twenty-one to vote. I'm only twelve."
"Reckon I'm soon looking at sixty."
"Then why can't you vote? Is it because you're a Shaker?"
"No, it's account of I can't read or write. When a man cannot do these things, people think his head is weak. Even when he's proved his back is strong.
"Who decides?"
"Men who look at me and take me not for what I be. Men who only see my mark, my X, when I can't sign my name. They can't see how I true a beam to build our barn, or see that the rows of corn in my field are straight as fences. They just seem me walk the street in Learning in clothes made me by my own woman. They do not care that my coat is strudy and keeps me warm. They'll not care that I owe no debt and I am beholding to no man.”
“There would be no work on this day. A day no pigs would die.”
“I stayed there until the fire died. So it would not have to die alone.”
“I’d heard about the Baptists from Jacob Henry’s mother. According to her, Baptists were a strange lot. They put you in water to see how holy you were. Then they ducked you under the water three times. Didn’t matter a whit if you could swim or no. If you didn’t come up, you got dead and your mortal soul went to Hell. But if you did come up, it was even worse. You had to be a Baptist.”
“Fences sure are funny, aren't they, Papa?"
"How so?"
"Well, you be friends with Mr. Tanner and all. But we keep this fence up like it was war. I guess that humans are the only things on earth that take everything they own and fence it off.”
“Try an’ try,” he said, “but when it comes day’s end, I can’t wash the pig off me. And your mother never complains. Not once, in all these years, has she ever said that I smell strong. I said once to her that I was sorry.”
“What did Mama say?”
“She said I smelled of honest work, and that there was no sorry to be said or heard.”
“When you re the only one to do something it always gets done.”
“The sky’s a good place to look,” he said. “And I got a notion it’s a good place to go.”
“No, sir. I won’t complain. Except when I move it sharp and sudden, my arm is real numb. It’s the rest of me that’s in misery.”
“Where?”
“My backside and my privates. I’m stuck so full of prickers, it makes me smart just to think on it.”
“Papa, ain’t it a caution that we can only eat two legs off a frog, ’stead of four.”
And he said: “Rob, here’s what you do. You catch a real big bullfrog and make friends with him. And teach him to jump backwards. That’ll make his front legs big as the hind.”
“We’d learned in school that the city of London, England, is the largest city in the whole wide world. Maybe so. But it couldn’t have been much bigger than Rutland.”
“It always looked to me like she was smiling. In fact, I know she was. Lots if things smile, like a flower to the sun. And one thing sure. I knew that just like I could smile to see Pinky, she sure could smile to see me.”
“of all the things in the world to see, I reckon the heavens at sundown has got to be my favorite sight. How about you?” “The sky’s a good place to look,” he said. “And I got a notion it’s a good place to go.”
“Some things you can never leave behind. They don't belong to the past. They belong to you.”
“All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together,looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.”
“What's wrong?"
I didn't say a word."
Something's up. What is it?"
Nothing."
His head turned, gaze going to mine. "Yeah?"
Yes."
A snort and he returned to his bowl…”
“We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say “They told me to do it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help us, to say “I was only following orders.”-World War Z”
“There had never been any line between them, only his own stupid fear and pride. Because from the moment he'd pulled her out of that mine in Endovier and she had set those eyes upon him, still fierce despite a year in hell, he'd been walking toward this, walking to her. So Chaol brushed away her tears, lifter her chin, and kissed her.”
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