Wallace Stegner · 563 pages
Rating: (5.9K votes)
“There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from The Big Rock Candy Mountain
“People, he had said, were always being looked at as points, and they ought to be looked at as lines. There weren't any points, it was false to assume that a person ever was anything. He was always becoming something, always changing, always continuous and moving, like the wiggly line on a machine used to measure earthquake shocks. He was always what he was in the beginning, but never quite exactly what he was; he moved along a line dictated by his heritage and his environment, but he was subject to every sort of variation within the narrow limits of his capabilities.
...
She shut her mind on that too. There was danger in looking at people as lines. The past spread backward and you saw things in perspective that you hadn't seen then, and that made the future ominous, more ominous than if you just looked at the point, at the moment. There might be truth in what Bruce said, but there was not much comfort.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from The Big Rock Candy Mountain
“Where do I belong in this country? Where is home?”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from The Big Rock Candy Mountain
“girl of eighteen named Elsa Norgaard,”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from The Big Rock Candy Mountain
“within yourself, you became a grave for her as you were a grave for Chet, and you carried your dead unquietly within you. —”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Wallace Stegner
Born place: in Lake Mills, Iowa, The United States
Born date February 18, 1909
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“La paura è come il catrame,
si appiccica dappertutto e divora ogni cosa.”
― Jason Segel, quote from Nightmares!
“We were about a mile from school, on a path in the park, when Chirag reached down and took off his shoes, tossing them into the trees beside us.
“What are you doing?” I shouted in between breaths. Step, breath. Step, breath. He was a few yards ahead of me. I took advantage of his pause to pass him; I wasn’t about to let him beat me.
“There’s a tribe of Indians in Mexico who are the best runners in the world,” he shouted. “They run barefoot for miles and miles and never break a sweat.”
“You’re not that kind of Indian,” I shouted back, and Chirag laughed, his golden skin shimmering beneath his sweat.
“You should try it, too!”
“No way!” I replied without turning around to face him. “The ground is filthy. There could be glass or splinters or something.”
“Aw, come on, Maisie,” he cooed, coming up on my left side and getting a few steps ahead of me once more. “I dare you.”
― Alyssa B. Sheinmel, quote from Faceless
“trust once broken can never be repaired.”
― Katerina Diamond, quote from The Teacher
“He looked like he wanted to eat you."
With that, I throw my head back and laugh. "That man has no problem finding a meal. I highly doubt he's starving."
She scrunches her nose to show me she doesn't agree. "Well, maybe he just spotted something new on the menu. You know men and their food; they have to try a little bit of everything until they're completely satisfied.”
― K.K. Allen, quote from Up in the Treehouse
“She didn’t know what to make of this sporadic urgency with him. It had confounded and humiliated her for the thirty years of their marriage. These endless pregnancies. And worse, her body’s insistence on a man who was the greatest mistake of her life.”
― Ayana Mathis, quote from The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
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