Allan Gurganus · 736 pages
Rating: (5.4K votes)
“Beware of using up your last forty years in being the curator of your first fifty.”
“Truth always leaves a pleasure asking questions.”
“How soon, sugar, the terrible becomes routine. We've all got this dangerous built-in talent: for turning horrors into errands. You hear folks wonder how the Germans could have done it? I believe part of the answer is: They made extermination be a nine-to-five activity. You know, salaries? Lunch breaks? And the staff came and did their job and went home and ate supper and slept and woke and came back and did their job and went home and ate their supper and slept and woke and came back and did their job. --That's partly how you get anything done, especially a chore what's dreadful, dreadful. -- Honey? we've all got to be real careful of what we can get used to.”
“(Spring is the earth forgiving itself.)”
“I started thinking of my absentee diamond. My thumb and little finger kept reaching for their pet and sidekick.”
“Seemed our house stirred up troubles enough to keep a radio soap show in daily episodes forever.”
“Once you harden, the arteries do.”
“All their lives they’ve said how Folks that don’t Work should Starve. Now they can’t work but they ain’t ready for what they been wishing on the shiftless of all races.”
“Fifteen, that’s the age when the only world event that counts is whatever mood you’re in that day.”
“Everything all right, Gwyneth?” asked Gideon, raising one eyebrow. “You look nervous. Would you like a cigarette to calm your nerves? What was your favorite brand, did you say? Marlboros?”
I could only stare at him speechlessly.
“Leave her alone,” said Xemerius. “Can’t you see she’s unhappy in love, bonehead? All because of you! What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Embraces do not matter; they merely indicate the will to love and may as well be followed by defeat as victory. But disregard means that now there needs to be no straining of the eyes, no stretching forth of the hands, no pressing of the lips, because theirs is such a union that they are no longer aware of the division of their flesh.”
“God, what's in these?" Sam asks, wrinkling his nose.
"Cod, I think," I say. "Close, though."
"I'd laugh, but I'd have to breathe, and that's not something I really want to do right now.”
“To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence.”
“liberal society, in its heart, wants not only domination of the military, but acquiesence of the military toward the liberal view of life.”
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