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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“If the work of our sanctification presents, apparently, the most insurmountable difficulties, it is because we do not know how to form a just idea of it. In reality sanctity can be reduced to one single practice, fidelity to the duties appointed by God. Now this fidelity is equally within each one's power whether in its active practice, or passive exercise. The active practice of fidelity consists in accomplishing the duties which devolve upon us whether imposed by the general laws of God and of the Church, or by the particular state that we may have embraced. Its passive exercise consists in the loving acceptance of all that God sends us at each moment.”
― quote from Abandonment to Divine Providence: The Classic Text with a Spiritual Commentary
“She looked at the last thing she had written and she felt calm. Then she crossed the words out vehemently, scribbling until even the shape of the sentence was destroyed.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from White is for Witching
“Oh, poor baby,” she said, mimicking his drawl.
“Whew. You’re back. There was this other Susie here a minute ago, and she was really nice to me. She scared the shit out of me.”
She laughed. “They locked her back up in the loony bin.”
“Good, because there’s only one Susie for me—the one who calls me on my crap and doesn’t let me get away with jack shit. That’s the Susie I need. That’s the Susie I’ve missed coming home to over the last year.” He kissed her. “And that’s the Susie who’s going to leave a gaping hole in my heart and my life if she doesn’t give me another chance.”
― Marie Force, quote from Line of Scrimmage
“What if I really am alone?”
“Baby, you aren’t alone. I’m here.”
― Karina Halle, quote from Dead Sky Morning
“How strangely distributed are our scruples. When they are evenly spread across our lives, we are judged good people. Mine, unfortunately, tend to bunch up.”
― Arthur Phillips, quote from The Tragedy of Arthur
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