Quotes from The Big Rock Candy Mountain

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



About the author

Wallace Stegner
Born place: in Lake Mills, Iowa, The United States
Born date February 18, 1909
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Release your cows so you can be truly happy.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, quote from Trái tim của Bụt


“Groovy? Is that some kind of code word?”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Calamity


“Pan," Hook said. "You saved my life."
Peter didn't know what to say. He had gone back to rescue Hook so unthinkingly, so instinctually, that he was only now beginning to realize he had done it. He hadn't worried about a single thing besides protecting Hook.
He cast around for a reason—an excuse, not the real reason, which he already knew.
"I had to," he said finally. "If you'd died there, I wouldn't have been the one to defeat you."
Hook gave a low chuckle. "Your obsession is flattering, Pan. And I share it."
"Obsession?"
"Is that not what they call it," Hook said, "when two men can think of nothing but each other?"
Peter went still, feeling his ears go hot at the implication. Hook knew, he thought. Hook knew exactly what Peter had felt before, when Hook had pinned him down.
He sat there tongue-tied. The two of them didn't speak for some time, until the kraken's last cringing wails had receded and there was no sound but the shiver of the leaves.
"Thank you," Hook said eventually. "I suppose I should have led with that.”
― Austin Chant, quote from Peter Darling


“We pretended she'd only gotten lost in the colors of fall.

Piper”
― T. Greenwood, quote from Undressing the Moon


“Side benefit of dating me: free motivational speeches. It's like friends with benefits where the benefits are inspirational.”
― Josh Sundquist, quote from We Should Hang Out Sometime: Embarrassingly, a True Story


Interesting books

Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship
(430)
Unscripted: Life, Li...
by M.J. DeMarco
Hunter
(580)
Hunter
by Eden Summers
Ragnarok
(3.8K)
Ragnarok
by A.S. Byatt
The Travelling Cat Chronicles
(1.9K)
The Weight of Zero
(1K)
The Weight of Zero
by Karen Fortunati
Breathing Under Water
(633)
Breathing Under Wate...
by Sophie Hardcastle

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.