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
“<…>Days before, seconds after she told him she wanted to have breakfast with her husband and he liked hearing her say that, he liked it too fucking much, he fucked up. Then he kept fucking up. Then he kept fucking doing it. He knew it and he couldn't stop.
Then, the instant she pressed her mouth to his, her soft body in his lap, overwhelmed with emotion and sharing that with him he lost control and he knew he couldn't do that. And the only way he could manage to keep control was to stay the fuck away from her, her sweet smiles, her soft voice, her brightness, that fantastic fucking body. He couldn't hold up. So he stayed the fuck away from her and spent a lot of time thinking about how to encourage her to stay the fuck away from him.<…>”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from Lady Luck
“It’s like living your whole life without ever looking in a mirror, Amy thought, and suddenly you see your reflection, and you’re a monster.”
― Gordon Korman, quote from The Emperor's Code
“Hoffnung ist ein kostbares Gut, nicht wahr? [...] Und doch wissen wir sie erst zu schätzen, wenn sie fort ist.”
― Amy Ewing, quote from The Jewel
“My lady, for your virtue and goodness, God would receive you in rags.”
― Alison Weir, quote from Innocent Traitor
“Bohemya Krallığı'nı tehdit eden büyük bir skandalın ve Sherlock Holmes'un bir kadının zekasına yenilmesinin hikayesiydi bu. O günden beri bir daha kadınların zekasıyla ilgili espriler yaptığını duymadım. Ayrıca Irene Adler'den veya fotoğrafından her zaman övgüyle söz etti.”
― quote from A Scandal in Bohemia (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, #1)
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