Quotes from Wolf Willow

Wallace Stegner ·  306 pages

Rating: (581 votes)


“No one who has studied Western history can cling to the belief that the Nazis invented genocide.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow


“A muddy little stream, a village grown unfamiliar with time and trees. I turn around and retrace my way up Main Street and park and have a Coke in the confectionery store. It is run by a Greek, as it used to be, but whether the same Greek or another I would not know. He does not recognize me, nor I him. Only the smell of his place is familiar, syrupy with old delights, as if the ghost of my first banana split had come close to breathe on me.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow


“The Cypress Hills massacre,...one of the final outrages of the literally lawless West...came...along that practical and symbolic divide, between the Canadian system of monopoly trading and the American system of competition, whiskey, bullets, exploitation, and extermination.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow


“In general the assumption of all of us, child or adult, was that this was a new country and that a new country had no history. History was something that applied to other places.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow


“The ferocious virtues that had been necessary for survival on the American frontier were theirs: they were men who lived freely, wastefully, independently, and they lived by killing--animals as a rule, men if necessary.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow



“What little strength he had left flowed out of him and was soaked up; his bones and veins and skin held nothing but tiredness and pain.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow


“He still wore, in the warming barracks, a muskrat cap with earlaps. Under it his eyes were gray as agates, as sudden as an elbow in the solar plexus.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow


“I may not know who I am, but I know where I am from.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow


“It is a country to breed mystical people, egocentric people, perhaps poetic people. But not humble ones…Puny you may feel there, and vulnerable, but not unnoticed. This is a land to mark the sparrow’s fall”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow


About the author

Wallace Stegner
Born place: in Lake Mills, Iowa, The United States
Born date February 18, 1909
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