Laurie Lee · 192 pages
Rating: (3.6K votes)
“For the first time I was learning how much easier it was to leave than to stay behind and love.”
“I felt once again the unease of arriving at night in an unknown city--that faint sour panic which seems to cling to a place until one has found oneself a bed.”
“But I think my most lasting impression was still the unhurried dignity and noblesse with which the Spaniard handled his drink. He never gulped, panicked, pleaded with the barman, or let himself be shouted into the street. Drink, for him, was one of the natural privileges of living, rather than the temporary suicide it so often is for others. But then it was lightly taxed here, and there were no licensing laws; and under such conditions one could take one's time.”
“I felt it was for this I had come: to wake at dawn on a hillside and look out on a world for which I had no words, to start at the beginning, speechless and without plan, in a place that still had no memories for me.”
“The borders of consciousness are anxious enough, raw and desperate places; we shouldn't be dragged across them like struggling thieves as if sleep was a felony.”
“There are brilliant evocations of intense heat (‘the brass-taloned lion which licks the afternoon ground ready to consume anyone not wise enough to take cover’) and sunlight (it ‘struck upwards, sideways and down, while the wheat went buckling across the fields like a solid sheet of copper’),”
“The psyche is built upon avoiding this pain, and as a result, it has fear of pain as its foundation. That is what caused the psyche to be. To understand this, notice that if the feeling of rejection is a major problem for you, you will fear experiences that cause rejection. That fear will become part of your psyche. Even though the actual events causing rejection are infrequent, you will have to deal with the fear of rejection all the time. That is how we create a pain that is always there. If you are doing something to avoid pain, then pain is running your life. All of your thoughts and feelings will be affected by your fears.”
“Just get him started on what he thinks is best for souls. He's all about making everyone feel right at home. Oh gods! He reads these stupid psychology books and just spouts off random psycho-babble. It's awful! - Cassandra”
“Some things are so real you can feel them to your core. It doesn't matter where you go, they go with you. Anywhere.”
“I wanted to wrap my bones around him and never let go.”
“To burning my father to the ground.”
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