“What I mean is, things like that happen. They may seem might cruel and unfair, but that's how life is a part of the time. But that isn't the only way life is. A part of the time, it's mighty good. And a man can't afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“That was as rough a thing as I ever heard tell of happening to a boy. And I'm mighty proud to learn how my boy stood up to it. You couldn't ask any more of a grown man... It's not a thing you can forget. I don't guess it's a thing you ought to forget. What I mean is, things like that happen. They may seem mighty cruel and unfair, but that's how life is part of the time. But that isn't the only way life is. A part of the time, it's mighty good. And a man can't afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad.”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“I remember like yesterday how he strayed in out of nowhere to our log cabin on Birdsong Creek. He made me so mad at first that I wanted to kill him. Then, later, when I had to kill him, it was like having to shoot some of my own folks.”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“Well, when you're fourteen years old, you can't afford to mix in a rock fight with your five-year-old brother. You can't do it, even when you're in the right. You just can't explain a thing like that to your folks. All they'll do is point out how much bigger you are, how unfair it is to your little brother.”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“When it came to gunfire Jumper didn’t have any more sense than a red ant in a hot skillet.”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“Now nothing was left hanging to the pole but the frazzled ends of the snapped blades.”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“... I guessed that when you are nearly a man, you have to learn to put up with a lot of aggravation from little old bitty kids.”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“I reached in and let him lick my hand. 'Yeller,' I said, 'I'll be back. I'm promising that I'll be back.”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“Then at night, we could hardly sleep. This”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“You're getting to be a big boy; and while I'm gone, you'll be the man of the family. I want you to act like one. You take care of Mama and Little Arliss. You look after the work and don't wait around for your mama to point out what needs to be done. Think you can do that?”
― Fred Gipson, quote from Old Yeller
“Clocks and calendars do not exist to remind us of the Time we've forgotten but to regulate our relations with others and indeed all of society, and this is how we use them.”
― Orhan Pamuk, quote from The Museum of Innocence
“It is not history. But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. And yet I recognise that we live our lives, and even keep our sanity, by the lights of this treachery and this unreliability, just as we build our love of country on these paper worlds of misapprehension and untruth. Perhaps this is our nature, and perhaps unaccountably it is part of our glory as a creature, that we can build our best and most permanent buildings on foundations of utter dust.”
― Sebastian Barry, quote from The Secret Scripture
“Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren't involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive--or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
“I don't have to listen to rumors about a man when I can judge him for myself.”
― Stephen King, quote from Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons
“Perhaps, I suggested, the fate of the universe could briefly take second place to the thorny issue of graduating with honours?
He blew loudly between his lips, a liquid sound of contempt. “That,” he exclaimed, “is precisely what’s wrong with academics.”
― Claire North, quote from The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
BookQuoters 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.
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