Allan Gurganus · 736 pages
Rating: (5.4K votes)
“Beware of using up your last forty years in being the curator of your first fifty.”
― Allan Gurganus, quote from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
“Truth always leaves a pleasure asking questions.”
― Allan Gurganus, quote from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
“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.”
― Allan Gurganus, quote from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
“(Spring is the earth forgiving itself.)”
― Allan Gurganus, quote from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
“I started thinking of my absentee diamond. My thumb and little finger kept reaching for their pet and sidekick.”
― Allan Gurganus, quote from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
“Seemed our house stirred up troubles enough to keep a radio soap show in daily episodes forever.”
― Allan Gurganus, quote from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
“Once you harden, the arteries do.”
― Allan Gurganus, quote from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
“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.”
― Allan Gurganus, quote from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
“Fifteen, that’s the age when the only world event that counts is whatever mood you’re in that day.”
― Allan Gurganus, quote from Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
“If we're afraid, sometimes there are things that can feed on that fear. Fear makes it worse for us. The trick is to concentrate on what you can see and stop thinking about yourself. It works every time...”
― Joseph Delaney, quote from The Spook's Apprentice - Play Edition
“I think about something I once heard on the radio. About Abraham and Isaac."
"I was afraid you'd say something like that."
"You asked."
"So what about them? I don't really know much about that kind of stuff."
"There was a pastor on the radio who said nobody should ever preach that story. Do you remember how it goes? God tells Abraham that he has to sacrifice his son to prove his faith."
"I agree with the pastor. It sounds like a sick story. Ban that shit."
"But isn't that exactly what we do? Send young men off to a war in the desert and ask them to sacrifice themselves for a belief?”
― quote from The Last Good Man
“Sometimes our passion is our ruin.”
― Helen Humphreys, quote from The Lost Garden
“Arms crossed over his chest,leaning against the wall that led to the back of the business,Nick Rixey appeared for all the world to be nonchalant and unaffected.”
― Laura Kaye, quote from Hard as It Gets
“We have flattered ourselves by inventing proverbs of comparison in matter of blindness,--"blind as a bat," for instance. It would be safe to say that there cannot be found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance and connection, as the greater majority of human beings are in the bosoms of their families. Tempers strain and recover, hearts break and heal, strength falters, fails, and comes near to giving way altogether, every day, without being noted by the closest lookers-on.”
― Helen Hunt Jackson, quote from Ramona
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