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
“You're staring."
"Can't 'elp meself, he replied. You were made to be stared at.”
― Bec McMaster, quote from Kiss of Steel
“It all just depends on the person you're with. If you can look at that person and know without a doubt that you want to spend the rest of your life kissing them goodnight and waking up next to them, marriage is for you.”
― Tara Sivec, quote from Futures and Frosting
“As the banks took over the securities, the ratios between their capital and their assets lurched down towards their regulatory minima. Central banks in the United States and Europe sought to alleviate the pressure on the banks with interest rate cuts”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“THERE ARE MEMORIES we cannot escape. We take them with us wherever we go, however far, like it or not. They pursue us or accompany us in good times and in bad. We smell their scents. We hear their sounds. We delight in them or dread them. By day and by night. My”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“But best of all … I got love. Not love under fear or condition. Not love that comes with a price. I got real, honest to god love in all its purest forms. Family love. Friend love. Unconditional love.”
― Samantha Towle, quote from Trouble
Between the Lines
Book of Shadows
Ironside
Cryer's Cross
Last Stand of Dead M...
MoonbloodBookQuoters 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.
