Richard Fariña · 352 pages
Rating: (2.5K votes)
“god, they say, is love. and some one's got to pass the word.”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
“The conscience of my elusive race gives not a fig for me, baby. But I endure, if you know what I mean.”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
“Been down so long it looks like up to me” is NOT a quote from Richard Fariña. It his the title of his novel. It is, in fact a quote from the 1928 blues song "I Will Turn Your Money Green".
Doesn't anybody vett these things?”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
“All about them the golden girls, shopping for dainties in Lairville. Even in the midst of the wild-maned winter's chill, skipping about in sneakers and sweatsocks, cream-colored raincoats. A generation in the mold, the Great White Pattern Maker lying in his prosperous bed, grinning while the liquid cools. But he does not know my bellows. Someone there is who will huff and will puff. The sophmores in their new junior blazers, like Saturday's magazines out on Thursday. Freshly covered textbooks from the campus store, slide rules dangling in leather, sheathed broadswords, chinos scrubbed to the virgin fiber, starch pressed into straight-razor creases, Oxford shirts buttoned down under crewneck sweaters, blue eyes bobbing everywhere, stunned by the android synthesis of one-a-day vitamins, Tropicana orange juice, fresh country eggs, Kraft homogenized cheese, tetra-packs of fortified milk, Cheerios with sun-ripened bananas, corn-flake-breaded chicken, hot fudge sundaes, Dairy Queen root beer floats, cheeseburgers, hybrid creamed corn, riboflavin extract, brewer's yeast, crunchy peanut butter, tuna fish casseroles, pancakes and imitation maple syrup, chuck steaks, occasional Maine lobster, Social Tea biscuits, defatted wheat germ, Kellogg's Concentrate, chopped string beans, Wonderbread, Birds Eye frozen peas, shredded spinach, French-fried onion rings, escarole salads, lentil stews, sundry fowl innards, Pecan Sandies, Almond Joys, aureomycin, penicillin, antitetanus toxoid, smallpox vaccine, Alka-Seltzer, Empirin, Vicks VapoRub, Arrid with chlorophyll, Super Anahist nose spray, Dristan decongestant, billions of cubic feet of wholesome, reconditioned breathing air, and the more wholesome breeds of fraternal exercise available to Western man. Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same.”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
“this is a nervous little decade we’re playing with”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
Richard Fariña
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
Born date March 8, 1937
See more on GoodReads
“There are only 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.”
― Penny Reid, quote from Neanderthal Seeks Human
“The royal hound's belly demands rubbing. Step lively, humans, neglect me not."
~Oberon”
― Kevin Hearne, quote from Hunted
“But stories are fragile. Like people's lives. It only takes a word out of place to change them forever. If you hear a lovely tune, and then you change it, the new tune might be lovely too, but you've lost the first one." "But if I stick to the first tune, then I've lost the second." "But someone else might discover it. It's still there to be born." "And the first tune isn't?" "No," Tallis insisted, although she was confused now. "It has already come into your mind. It's lost forever." "Nothing is lost forever," Mr. Williams said quietly. "Everything I've known I still know, only sometimes I don't know that I know it." All things are known, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them. "My grandfather said something like that to me," Tallis whispered. "Well there you are. Wise Old Men, one and all…”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“Watching her made my heart ache, as if that organ had become linked to her emotional state, rather than targeting its primary task—keeping me alive.”
― Tammara Webber, quote from Breakable
“If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
Hemy
Three Men on the Bum...
Fuel the Fire
Lost in Babylon
Waiting for Godot: A...
Five Ways to FallBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
