Quotes from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

Breece D'J Pancake ·  192 pages

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“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


About the author

Breece D'J Pancake
Born place: in South Charleston, West Virginia, The United States
Born date June 29, 1952
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“IGNORANCE

I didn’t know love would make me this
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“The Gospels were written in such temporal and geographical proximity to the events they record that it would have been almost impossible to fabricate events. Anyone who cared to could have checked out the accuracy of what they reported. The fact that the disciples were able to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem in the face of their enemies a few weeks after the crucifixion shows that what they proclaimed was true, for they could never have proclaimed the resurrection under such circumstances had it not occurred.

The Gospels could not have been corrupted without a great outcry on the part of orthodox Christians. Against the idea that there could have been a deliberate falsifying of the text, no one could have corrupted all the manuscripts. Moreover, there is no precise time when the falsification could have occurred, since, as we have seen, the New Testament books are cited by the church fathers in regular and close succession. The text could not have been falsified before all external testimony, since then the apostles were still alive and could repudiate any such tampering with the Gospels.

The miracles of Jesus were witnessed by hundreds of people, friends and enemies alike; that the apostles had the ability to testify accurately to what they saw; that the apostles were of such doubtless honesty and sincerity as to place them above suspicion of fraud; that the apostles, though of low estate, nevertheless had comfort and life itself to lose in proclaiming the gospel; and that the events to which they testified took place in the civilized part of the world under the Roman Empire, in Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jewish nation. Thus, there is no reason to doubt the apostles’ testimony concerning the miracles and resurrection of Jesus. It would have been impossible for so many to conspire together to perpetrate such a hoax. And what was there to gain by lying? They could expect neither honor, nor wealth, nor worldly profit, nor fame, nor even the successful propagation of their doctrine. Moreover, they had been raised in a religion that was vastly different from the one they preached. Especially foreign to them was the idea of the death and resurrection of the Jewish Messiah. This militates against their concocting this idea. The Jewish laws against deceit and false testimony were very severe, which fact would act as a deterrent to fraud.

Suppose that no resurrection or miracles occurred: how then could a dozen men, poor, coarse, and apprehensive, turn the world upside down? If Jesus did not rise from the dead, declares Ditton, then either we must believe that a small, unlearned band of deceivers overcame the powers of the world and preached an incredible doctrine over the face of the whole earth, which in turn received this fiction as the sacred truth of God; or else, if they were not deceivers, but enthusiasts, we must believe that these extremists, carried along by the impetus of extravagant fancy, managed to spread a falsity that not only common folk, but statesmen and philosophers as well, embraced as the sober truth. Because such a scenario is simply unbelievable, the message of the apostles, which gave birth to Christianity, must be true.

Belief in Jesus’ resurrection flourished in the very city where Jesus had been publicly crucified. If the people of Jerusalem thought that Jesus’ body was in the tomb, few would have been prepared to believe such nonsense as that Jesus had been raised from the dead. And, even if they had so believed, the Jewish authorities would have exposed the whole affair simply by pointing to Jesus’ tomb or perhaps even exhuming the body as decisive proof that Jesus had not been raised.

Three great, independently established facts—the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith—all point to the same marvelous conclusion: that God raised Jesus from the dead.”
― William Lane Craig, quote from Reasonable Faith


“«Un gran escritor no es más que un escritor. La diferencia es de matiz, no de raíz. Todos los saltadores de altura saltan, digamos, dos metros. Si uno salta dos metros y cinco centímetros, ya es un gran deportista. No, no merece la pena fatigarse siquiera con la idea de llegar a ser un pobre gran escritor, un desdichado escritor genial. Coge los mejores libros escritos jamás. Apenas son algo mejores que los libros mediocres. Todos son fundamentalmente libros nada más. Te proporcionarán, cuando los leas, un placer estético algo más intenso. Como un café un poco más dulce. Los soltarás al cabo de treinta páginas para prepararte un bocadillo o para ir al baño. Los leerás a la vez que quién sabe qué novela policiaca. Dentro de unos miles de años también ellos serán tierra y polvo. En estas condiciones, que tú, un ser al que se le ha concedido la oportunidad disparatada de existir y de reflexionar sobre el mundo, te propongas llegar a ser tan solo un genio es humillante, es ínfimo. Es como si abandonaras todo y te internaras de nuevo en el bosque. En cada individuo hay posibilidades ante las cuales la ambición de ser el escritor más importante de todos los tiempos es simplemente denigrante por su simplicidad. Porque ¿qué milagro es importante comparado con el de existir y de saber que existes? De aquí hasta ser el hombre más rico, el más poderoso, el más ingenioso del mundo es como pasar de un billón a un billón uno, incluso menos. No, no quiero llegar a ser un gran escritor, quiero llegar a ser Todo. Sueño sin cesar con un creador que, a través de su arte, llegue a influir de verdad en la vida de las personas, de todas las personas, y después en la vida de las personas, de todas la personas, y después en la vida del universo, hasta las estrellas más lejanas, hasta el final del espacio y del tiempo. Y que a continuación sustituya al universo, que se convierta él mismo en el Mundo. Sólo así creo que podría un hombre, un artista, cumplir su misión. El resto es literatura, una colección de trucos mejor o peor dominados, trozos de papel emborronados con brea por los que nadie da un real, por muy geniales que sean esas líneas de signos que, dentro de poco ni siquiera serán comprendidas».”
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