Richard Brautigan · 144 pages
Rating: (2.3K votes)
“I had become so quiet and so small in the grass by the pond that I was barely noticeable, hardly there. I sat there watching their living room shining out of the dark beside the pond. It looked like a fairy-tale functioning happily in the post-World War II gothic of America before television crippled the imagination and turned people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity. Anyway, I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away
“There wasn't a single thing in there that reminded me of my existence.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away
“When he said this, it was not a form of criticism. It was just a simple observation that led to another bite from the movie on his plate called The Old Man and the Stew.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away
“I was too young and naive then to link up the meaning of those ridiculingly defunct tennis shoes that I was forced to wear with the reality that we were on Welfare and Welfare was not designed to provide a child with any pride in its existence.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away
“I had become so quiet and so small in the grass by the pond that I was barely noticeable, hardly there… I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then…”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away
“I guess some people lived like Reader's Digest, but I hadn't met any and at that time it seemed doubtful that I ever would”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away
Richard Brautigan
Born place: in Tacoma, Washington, The United States
Born date January 30, 1935
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“Where there is reverence, there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear has a wider scope than reverence. We fear what we cannot see. We fear what we do see. We fear what we cannot know. We fear what we do know. We fear what may not happen. We fear what does happen. Death may be the greatest of all human blessings. If only because it finally puts an end to fear.”
― Jeff Wheeler, quote from The Hollow Crown
“After all of this, I do not want to be eaten by some random demon who just wanted a postshow snack.”
― Michelle Knudsen, quote from Evil Librarian
“I’m going to explain this to you in terms you can understand: shut up.”
― Brent Weeks, quote from The Blood Mirror
“Jab, jab, truce! This, it seems, is marriage–”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from The Last Anniversary
“Ever since I became an American, people have told me that America is about leaving your past behind. I’ve never understood that. You can no more leave behind your past than you can leave behind your skin.
The compulsion to delve into the past, to speak for the dead, to recover their stories: that’s part of who Evan was, and why I loved him. Just the same, my grandfather is part of who I am, and what he did, he did in the name of my mother and me and my children. I am responsible for his sins, in the same way that I take pride in inheriting the tradition of a great people, a people who, in my grandfather’s time, committed great evil.
In an extraordinary time, he faced extraordinary choices, and maybe some would say this means that we cannot judge him. But how can we really judge anyone except in the most extraordinary of circumstances? It’s easy to be civilized and display a patina of orderliness in calm times, but your true character only emerges in darkness and under great pressure: is it a diamond or merely a lump of the blackest coal?
Yet, my grandfather was not a monster. He was simply a man of ordinary moral courage whose capacity for great evil was revealed to his and my lasting shame. Labeling someone a monster implies that he is from another world, one which has nothing to do with us. It cuts off the bonds of affection and fear, assures us of our own superiority, but there’s nothing learned, nothing gained. It’s simple, but it’s cowardly. I know now that only by empathizing with a man like my grandfather can we understand the depth of the suffering he caused. There are no monsters. The monster is us.”
― Ken Liu, quote from The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
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