Walter Van Tilburg Clark · 712 pages
Rating: (56 votes)
“Places, like people, have their beginnings and have also their endings.”
“Nothing imaginative ever happens to five people at once, because each is up to only one-fifth of his personal intelligence and perception. A crowd is never equal to the intelligence of any one of its members.”
“Just being is the main thing. Anything else is extra.”
“It is possible to insult Americans?”
“They are automatically insulted and enraged,” said the young composer. “They form splenetic organizations by the hundreds, and write letters to periodicals and congressmen. They gather in mobs and pay no attention. They hang people without trial and shoot citizens down with machine guns out of passing cars. They will despise you because you do not eat the same things they eat for breakfast. They even apply indifference.”
“Although my parents never attended church or mentioned Jesus except when they screamed at each other—and then they used his full name, 'Jesus Fucking Christ”
“What can I give for
Your knowledge
Of when to expand
And when to contract—
This instructed, more academic college
Of when to act?”
“Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.”
“Love and magic are like oil and water--they just don't mix.”
“He could not call up the faces of his own mother and father, who had died three or four years before. He would look at a picture, and there they would be. Perhaps people were progressively harder to paint in the mind as they near one, loved by one. Perhaps clear memories came easily in proportion as they were ugly.”
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