The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories

...of all things this was the saddest, that life goes on: if one leaves one's lover, life should stop for him, and if one disappears from the world, then the world should stop, too: and it never did. And that was the real reason for most people getting up in the morning: not because it would matter but because it wouldn't.

It may be that there is no place for any of us. Except we know there is somewhere; and if we found it, but lived there only a moment, we could count ourselves blessed.

We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed - begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I've never mastered it - I only know how true it is; that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.

But, ah, the energy we spend hiding from one another, afraid as we are of being identified.

If some wizard would like to give me a present, let him give me a bottle filled with the voices of that kitchen, the ha ha ha and the fire whispering, a bottle brimming with its buttery sugary smells . . .

What one says hardly matters, only the trust with which it is said, the sympathy with which it is received.

Dreams are the mind of the soul and the secret truth about us.

Dolly said that when she was a girl she’d liked to wake up winter mornings and hear her father singing as he went about the house building fires; after he was old, after he’d died, she sometimes heard his songs in the field of Indian grass. Wind, Catherine said; and Dolly told her: But the wind is us—it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields—I’ve heard Papa clear as day. On

I'll own up: I think it is a dream, Miss Verena. But a man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat: he stores up a lot of poison.

So little, once it has changed, changes back.

I've been other things beside a clown. I have sold insurance, too.

It's the uncertainty concerning themselves that makes our friends conspire to deny the differences.

If you are not admired no one will take the trouble to disapprove.

It was like the time he'd failed algebra and felt so relieved, so free: failure was definite, a certainty, and there is always peace in certainties.

If you can hear time passing it makes the day last longer. I've come to appreciate a long day.

A plaster girl with intense glass eyes sat astride a bicycle pedaling at the maddest pace; though its wheel spokes spun hypnotically, the bicycle of course never budged: all that effort and the poor girl going nowhere. It was a pitifully human situation, and one that Sylvia could so exactly identify with herself that she always felt a real pang.

To hell with all that, began the Sheriff, and was again interrupted by Mrs. Buster, who said that under no circumstances would she tolerate swearing: will we Reverend? and the Reverend, backing her up, said he'd be damned if they would.

Preacher spit on the ground and swaggered over to Billy Bob. Come on, he said, just as though nothing had happened, She's a hard one, she is, she don't want nothing but to make trouble between two good friends. For a moment it looked as if Billy Bob was going to join him in a peaceful togetherness; but suddenly, coming to his senses, he drew back and made a gesture. The boys regarded each other a full minute, all the closeness between them turning an ugly color: you can't hate so much unless you love, too.

the wind is us—it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields—I

The police said for Oreilly to get to his feet. "Certainly," Oreilly said, "though I do think it shocking you have to trouble yourself with such petty crimes as mine when everywhere there are master thieves afoot. "For instance, this pretty child," he stepped between the officers and pointed at Sylvia, "she is the recent victim of a major theft; poor baby, she has had her soul stolen.

We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed—begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First, a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I’ve never mastered it—I only know how true it is: that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.

she seemed to be moving forward into the future, while I, unable to follow, was left with my sameness.

Kay yawned and rested her forehead against the windowpane, her fingers idly strumming the guitar: the strings sang a hollow, lulling tune, as monotonously soothing as the Southern landscape, smudged in darkness, flowing past the window. An icy winter moon rolled above the train across the night sky like a thin white wheel.