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
“Who is better able to know God than I myself, since He resides in my heart and is the very essence of my being? Such should be the attitude of one who is seeking.”
― quote from The Upanishads: Translations from the Sanskrit
“At least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.”
― Charles Baxter, quote from The Feast of Love
“The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Sexing the Cherry
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from A Grief Observed
“Many fathers are gone. Some leave, some are left. Some return, unknown and hungry. Only the dog remembers.”
― Nick Flynn, quote from Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
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