Allan Gurganus · 736 pages
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“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
“We once again man the barricades -- alone. Berated by our smug, so-called allies, of the Western Democracies. Islam is going to turn this world inside out before this century is out and you'd better have enough guts to deal with it.”
― Leon Uris, quote from The Haj
“...for the purity of first light is bliss
and surely the whole point of faith
is just in this: -
Not that we believe
but that we ask of He
to have faith in us.”
― Gabriel Brunsdon, quote from Azlander: Second Nature
“I suddenly realise that in the last four years I forgot what it feels like to go to the movies. I forgot about the seats with their velour and plastic arms, the smell of popcorn and the way the blackness takes away normal life and replaces it with a whole new world for an hour and a half. I forgot about the emotion and the excitement and the tension and the relief at the end when everything works out alright.”
― Cecily Anne Paterson, quote from Invisible
“Life is about the good and the bad. Good is easy. Bad is hard. Finding a way to make good from the bad is the secret. The few who discover the ability within themselves--nothing can stand in their way of happiness.”
― quote from First Night of Summer
“She once told me of a night that fumed with escapes and was filled with bedsides reeking of ecstasy; she told me the stars cast not judgments, but blessings, knowing full well the disastrous outcomes of the deeds they cradled with the strings of their young hearts. She’d inhaled the night itself, those around her doing the same, and so all become one. No disharmony. No discordance. Nothing to shatter the cause; nothing to unearth the beauty. So as we together ascended that front porch, allowing the glow behind the blown-out windows and the odious steams plunder us from through the cracks...time forgot to distill us, and our steps became as silver as glass. I could no longer deny the boiling words of my blood: tonight would be the beginning of a very long road indeed.”
― Dave Matthes, quote from Sleepeth Not, the Bastard
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