Jean Craighead George · 192 pages
Rating: (53.4K votes)
“Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.”
― Jean Craighead George, quote from My Side of the Mountain
“Fortunately, the sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning”
― Jean Craighead George, quote from My Side of the Mountain
“See that falcon? Hear those white-throated sparrows? Smell that skunk? Well, the falcon takes the sky, the white-throated sparrow takes the low bushes, the skunk takes the earth...I take the woods.”
― Jean Craighead George, quote from My Side of the Mountain
“I must say this now about that first fire. It was magic. Out of dead tinder and grass and sticks came a live warm light. It cracked and snapped and smoked and filled the woods with brightness. It lighted the trees and made them warm and friendly. It stood tall and bright and held back the night.”
― Jean Craighead George, quote from My Side of the Mountain
“Chicken is Good! It tastes like chicken.”
― Jean Craighead George, quote from My Side of the Mountain
“The way that woman walked, like she was paying the sidewalk a favor.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, quote from 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas
“No he probado la ejecución ni la reclusión perpetua, pero si se puede juzgar a priori, la pena de muerte, a mi juicio, es más moral y humana que la reclusión. La ejecución mata de golpe, mientras que la reclusión vitalicia lo hace lentamente. ¿Cuál de los verdugos es más humano? ¿El que lo mata a usted en pocos minutos o el que le quita la vida durante muchos años?”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“Jafaa. In Persian, this very poetic word refers to all the wrongs you do to those who love you.”
― Maziar Bahari, quote from Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival
“I turned toward her with red, puffy eyes. Her own eyes widened with concern, and she froze as she watched me walk into the kitchen, like she was waiting for me to crumple onto the floor and shatter into pieces.
“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s an emotional book. I’m just getting a glass of water.” I reached for the tequila.
She got up and followed me into the kitchen. “That’s not water.”
“And?”
“It’s ten a.m.”
“And?”
“You look like you’ve been crying for an hour straight . . . and you’re hitting the hard stuff at—and I repeat—ten a.m.”
“Cara, you have the most amazing powers of perception.” I looked at the bottle in one hand and the glass in the other, shrugged, set the glass down, and headed back to my room with the bottle only.
“I’m worried about you,” Cara called out as I walked away.
“I’m fine. Just gonna sit in here, read, and have myself a little mental health day.” I turned and smiled and then locked myself in my room.
“Mental health days don’t usually involve tequila at ten a.m.!” she yelled through the door.
“I’m fine!”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Swear on This Life
“It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie--I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.
HUCK FINN.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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