“Suddenly it seemed to me that I looked back from a great distance on that smile and saw it all again - the smile and the day, the whole sunny, sad, funny, wonderful day and all the days that we had spent here together. What was I going to do when such days came no more? There could not be many; for we were a family growing old. And how would I learn to live without these people? I who needed them so little that I could stay away all year - what should I do without them?”
“Yet none of these things gave him confidence. All they gave him was egotism, which is less the conviction of one's worth than the desire for that conviction.”
“Nothing came in reasonable measure, it seemed, not water or sunshine or sorrow. But joy, too, is immoderate sometimes, and that makes up for the rest.”
“But very early they understood that playing was somewhat suspect, allowed through indulgence, a trivial pastime soon outgrown, and only about twice removed from sin. Pleasure was only once-removed.”
“I ran to the window and looked out. It was the prettiest morning I ever saw, and I’ve seen a lot of pretty ones in my day. I get up looking for them. We”
“She went outside and down the path, pausing by the smokehouse to county the moon flower pods. Another day or two and they would be ready to bloom. The flowers were so lovely, they lasted so short a time. It was almost like the children's visit, something you looked forward to all year, then it came, and you enjoyed it so much, and then it was over, in no time. Maybe that's the way it should be...”
“No day is safe from news of you.”
“Here’s a tip. The good guys ask you to get in the truck. The bad guys put a black bag over your head and throw you in the truck. I’m asking.”
“I can’t think about anything but kissing you… about being with you…’ He shrugs. ‘There, I said it. Need me to say it one more time?’
‘No, I got it,’ I say in a weak voice.”
“Eirikr lies on the table, staring into the night sky, staring at the uncountable stars that are shining brightly down on him.
What lives, he thinks, are lived by the men up there?
What do they do?
What do they believe?
What do they see?
Do they see me?
He wonder about them all, all the many lives that have been, and that will be, and wonders why they are not all the same, why they are what they are. It cannot be, he thinks, that when our life is run, we are done. There must be more to man than that, surely?
That we are not just one, but a multitude.”
“For all the strides the Nation [of Islam] had made in promoting self-improvement in the lives of its members, its political isolation had left it powerless to change the external conditions that bounded their freedoms (177).”
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