Breece D'J Pancake · 192 pages
Rating: (4K votes)
“I feel my fear moving away in rings through time for a million years.”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
“I lean back, try to forget these fields and flanking hills. A long time before me or these tools, the Teays flowed here. I can almost feel the cold waters and the tickling the trilobites make when they crawl. All the water from the old mountains flowed west. But the land lifted. I have only the bottoms and stone animals I collect. I blink and breathe. My father is a khaki cloud in the canebrakes, and Ginny is no more to me than the bitter smell in the blackberry briers up on the ridge. --from Trilobites”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
“But if life has any definition at all, it is the things that happen to us while we are making plans.”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
“I walk along the avenue thinking how shit always sinks, and how all these towns dump their shit for the river to push it down to the delta. Then I think about that girl sitting in the alley, sitting in her own slough, and I shake my head. I have not gotten that low.
I stop in front of the bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can't run away from it or drink their way out or die to get rid of it. It's always there, you just look at somebody and they give you a look like the Wrath of God.”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
“Daylight fires the ridges green, shifts the colors of the fog, touches the brick streets of Rock Camp with a reddish tone. The streetlights flicker out, and the traffic signal at the far end of Front Street's yoke snaps on; stopping nothing, warning nothing, rushing nothing on. --from The Honored Dead”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
“I stop in front of the bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can’t run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It’s always there, you just look at somebody and they give you a look like the Wrath of God.”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
“He hears false power in the preacher's voice, sees outsiders pretending. Old fool, he thinks, new fools are here to take your place.”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
“Love dies in many different ways, and it's natural for the grass to seem greener on the other side. But it's not a competition; there's plenty of pain to go around.”
― Rob Sheffield, quote from Love Is a Mix Tape
“Yet, after all, they were not bad souls; and though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best.”
― Isabella L. Bird, quote from Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
“Reality depends upon your mind alone.[34]”
― Kamo no Chōmei, quote from Hojoki: Ten Foot Square House
“When at last a cab arrived and pulled up directly in front of me, I was astonished to discover that seventeen grown men and women believed they had a perfect right to try to get in ahead of me. A middle-aged man in a cashmere coat who was obviously wealthy and well-educated actually laid hands on me. I maintained possession by making a series of aggrieved Gallic honking noises—“Mais, non! Mais, non!”—and using my bulk to block the door. I leaped in, resisting the chance to catch the pushy man’s tie in the door and let him trot along with us to the Gare du Nord, and told the driver to get me the hell out of there. He looked at me as if I were a large, imperfectly formed turd, and with a disgusted sigh engaged first gear.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
“He had always thought of solitary diners as sad. But now that he was the solitary diner, he felt rather superior. On account of the book, mostly. Learning something while everyone else was wasting time. Like working at night.”
― Mark Haddon, quote from A Spot of Bother
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