Susan Beth Pfeffer · 336 pages
Rating: (32.2K votes)
“If God wanted a world filled with saints, He never would have created adolescence.”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, quote from The Dead and the Gone
“Even the rats are drowning,' Alex said.
Nah,' Kevin said. 'They've been taking swimming lessons at the Y.”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, quote from The Dead and the Gone
“He walked out of the office to find Kevin Daley standing there. 'I like your style,' Kevin said.
Thank you,' Alex said. 'I like it, too.”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, quote from The Dead and the Gone
“Sometimes the rules don't work. Sometimes the rules cause the anarchy.”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, quote from The Dead and the Gone
“Carlos was probably somewhere warm, eating three meals a day, and sleeping in a real bed. That was the life”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, quote from The Dead and the Gone
“Their eyes were usually open, and they stared up at the moon that had killed them.”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, quote from The Dead and the Gone
“Sometimes the rues don't work. Sometimes the rules cause the anarchy.”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, quote from The Dead and the Gone
Susan Beth Pfeffer
Born place: New York City, The United States
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“Are you an angel that approaching you should be so terrifying?”
― Orhan Pamuk, quote from My Name is Red
“EDMUND
*Then with alcoholic talkativeness
You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!
*He grins wryly.
It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in love with death!
TYRONE
*Stares at him -- impressed.
Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right.
*Then protesting uneasily.
But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death.
EDMUND
*Sardonically
The *makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.”
― Eugene O'Neill, quote from Long Day's Journey Into Night
“I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Come on, it’s an American tradition. Apple soup? Mom’s homemade chicken pie?'
She chuckled in spite of herself, then winced. 'It’s apple pie and Mom’s homemade chicken soup. But you didn’t do badly, for a start.”
― L.J. Smith, quote from Nightfall
“If there have been mute inglorious Miltons in rural villages, presumably there have been unrealized Washingtons born in unpropitious times.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, quote from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
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