The Bridges of Madison County

The human heart has a way of making itself large again even after it's been broken into a million pieces.

In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.

The old dreams were good dreams; they didn't work out but I'm glad I had them.

It's clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty bumming blithely along beneath our ignorance that ensured we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another.

Analysis destroys wholes. Some things, magic things, are meant to stay whole. If you look at their pieces, they go away.

The heart never forgets, never gives up, the territory marked off for those who came before.

And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.

Complex things are easy to do. Simplicity's the real challenge.

First you must have the images, then come the words.

I sometimes have the feeling you've been here a long time, more than one lifetime, and that you've dwelt in private places none of the rest of us has even dreamed about.

There are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads. This is one of them.

It’s clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty bumming blithely along beneath our ignorance that ensured we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another.

So here I am walking around with another person inside of me. Though I think I put it better the day we parted when I said there is a third person we have created from the two of us. And I am stalked now by that other entity.

I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust. God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep that in mind. But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head. I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will. The last cowboy, Robert

Such physical matters were nice, yet, to him, intelligence and passion born of living, the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit, were what really counted.

The road is a strange place. Shuffling along, I looked up and you were there walking across the grass toward my truck on an August day. In retrospect, it seems inevitable - it could not have been any other way-- a case of what I call the high probability of the improbable

The reality is not exactly what the song started out to be, but it's not a bad song.

...realities that kept the music silent, the dreams in a box.

He was an animal. A graceful, hard, male animal who did nothing overtly to dominate her yet dominated her completely, in the exact way she wanted that to happen at this moment.

Anyone who can feel that way about a woman is worth lovin himself.

The old dreams were good dreams; the didn't work out, but I'm glad I had them.

You make pictures, not take them? Yes. At least that's how I think of it. That's the difference between Sunday snapshooters and someone who does it for a living... I don't just take things as given, I try to make them into something that reflects my personal consciousness, my spirit. I try to find the poetry in the image.

I am the highway and a peregrine and all the sails that ever went to sea

Eventually, computers and robots will run things. Humans will manage those machines, but that doesn't require courage or strength, or any characteristics like those. In fact, men are outliving their usefulness

His eyes looked directly at her, and she felt something jump inside. The eyes, the voice, the face, the silver hair, the easy way he moved his body, old ways, disturbing ways, ways that draw you in. Ways that whisper to you in the final moment before sleep comes, when the barriers have fallen.

And, man he cried when he talked. He cried big tears, the kind it takes an old man to cry, the kind it takes a saxophone to play.

It already smells good," he said, pointing toward the stove. "It smells... quiet." He looked at her. "Quiet? Could something smell quiet" She was thinking about the phrase, asking herself. He was right. After the pork chops and steaks and roasts she cooked for the family, this was quiet cooking. No violence involved anywhere down the food chain, except maybe for pulling up the vegetables. The stew cooked quietly and smelled quiet.

Talisman, Talisman, show me your secrets, Helmsman, Helmsman, turn me for home.

Gypsies make difficult friends for ordinary people, and he was seething of a gypsy.

Something I've never been able to adapt to, to understand is how they can lavish such love and care on the animals and then see them sold for slaughter. I don't dare say anything about it, though. Richard and his friends would be down on me in a flash. But there's some kind of cold, unfeeling contradiction in that business.