Yarbrough's Final
"A thin man in a stained leather vest with embroidery on the front was watching John Grady with narrowed and speculative eyes. John Grady handed back the wax and this man hissed at him and jerked his head. John Grady turned. Es su hermano, el rubio? He meant Blevins. John Grady shook his head. No, he said. Quien es? said the man. He looked across the clearing. The cook had given Blevins some lard and he sat rubbing it into his sunburned legs. Un muchacho, no más, he said. Algún parentesco? No. Un amigo. Tohn Grady drew on the cigarette and tapped the ash again» the heel of his boot. Nada, he said. No one spoke. The man in the vest studied John Grady and he looked across the clearing at Blevins. Then he asked John Grady if he wished to sell the boy. He didnt answer for a moment. The man may have thought he was weighing the matter. They waited. He looked up. No, he said. Qué vale? said the man. John Grady stubbed out the cigarette against the sole of his boot and rose. Gracias por su hospitalidad, he said. The man offered that he would trade for him in wax. The others had turned to listen to him. Now they turned and looked at John Grady. John Grady studied them. They did not look evil but it was no comfort to him" (76)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting. He looked down at the guttered candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping. It was dark outside and cold and no wind. In the distance a calf bawled. He stood with his hat in his hand. You never combed your hair that way in your life, he said. Inside the house there was no sound save the ticking of the mantel clock in the front room. He went out and shut the door. Dark and cold and no wind and a thin gray reef beginning along the eastern rim of the world. He walked out on the prairie and stood holding his hat like some supplicant to the darkness over them all and he stood there for a long time" (3).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"Blevins are you a cowboy? said Rawlins. I like it. Everbody likes it. I dont claim to be no top hand. I can ride. Yeah? said Rawlins. Yeah man yonder can ride, said Blevins. He nodded across the fire toward John Grady. What makes you say that? He just can, that's all. Suppose I was to tell you he just took it up. Suppose I wash tell you he's never been on a horse a girl couldnt ride. I'd have to say you was pullin my leg Suppose I was to tell you he's the best I ever saw. Blevins spat into the fire. You doubt that? No, I dont doubt it. Depends on who you seen ride. I seen Booger Red ride, said Rawlins. Yeah? said Blevins. Yeah. You think he can outride him? I know for a fact he can. Maybe he can and maybe he caint. Red's been dead forever. You dont know shit from applebutter, said Rawlins (58).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision 1 made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I'd made before it. You understand what I'm sayin? Yeah. I think so. Meanin what? Meanin this is it. This is our last chance. Right now. This is the time and there wont be another time and I guarantee it. Meanin just leave him? Yessir. What if it was you? It aint me. What if it was? Rawlins twisted the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and plucked a match from his pocket and popped it alight with his thumbnail. He looked at John Grady. I wouldnt leave you and you wouldnt leave me. That aint no argument. You realize the fix he's in? Yeah. I realize it. It's the one he's put hisself in" (79)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"He rode out past the last low mudbuilt houses and took the road north, a mud track that wound up through the barren gravel hills and branched and broke and finally terminated in the tailings of an abandoned mine among the rusted shapes of pipe and pumpstanchions and old jacktimbers. He crossed on through the high country and in the evening descended the north slope and rode out onto the foreplain where the creosote deep olive from the rains stood in solemn colonies as it had stood a thousand years and more in that tenantless waste, older than any living thing that was" (285)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"He rode where he would always choose to ride, out where the western fork of the old Comanche road coming down out of the Kiowa country to the north passed through the westernmost section of the ranch and you could see the faint trace of it bearing south over the low prairie that lay between the north and middle forks of the Concho River. At the hour he'd always choose when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted light like a dream of the past where the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came down out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited and each armed for, war which was their life and the women and children and women with children at their breasts all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only" (5)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west" (5).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"He spoke of his campaigns in the deserts of Mexico and he told them of horses killed under him and he said that the souls of horses mirror the souls of men more closely than men suppose and that horses also love war. Men say they only learn this but he said that no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to hold. His own father said that no man who has not gone to war horseback can ever truly understand the horse and he said that he supposed he wished that this were not so but that it was so. Lastly he said that he had seen the souls of horses and that it was a terrible thing to see. He said that it could be seen under certain circumstances attending the death of a horse because the horse shares a common soul and its separate life only forms it out of all horses and makes it mortal. He said that if a person understood the soul of the horse then he would understand all horses that ever were" (111)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"He thought of his father in Goshee. He knew that terrible things had been done to him there and he had always believed that he did not want to know about it bur he did want to know. He lay in the dark thinking of all the things he did not know about his father and he realized that the father he knew was all the father he would ever know. He would not think about Alejandra because he didnt know what was coming or how bad it would be and he thought she was something he'd better save. So he thought about horses and they were always the right thing to think about. Later someone turned the light back on again and it did not go off again after that" (204).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"How long do you think you'd like to stay here? About a hundred years. Go to sleep" (96).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"How many are there? Said John Grady. Rawlins looked them over. Fifteen. Sixteen. I make it sixteen. Sixteen then. You think you and me could break all of em in four & Depends on what you call broke. Just halfway decent greenbroke horses. Say six saddles. I ble and stop and stand still to be saddled, Rawlins took his tobacco from his pocket and pushed his hat. What you got in mind? he said. Breakin these horses, Why four days? You think we could do it?" (100)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"I cannot do what you ask, she Said. I love you. But I cannot. He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that in smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave. When she came out of the bathroom again she was dressed and he made her sit on the bed and he held her hands both of them and talked to her but she only shook her head and she turned away her tearstained face and told him that it was time to go and that she could not miss the train" (254).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"I did not know that he would stop loving me. I didn't know he could. Now I know." (252).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"I didnt want to be a judge. I was a young lawyer practicing in San Antonio and I come back out here when my daddy was sick and I went to work for the county prosecutor. I sure didnt want to be a judge. I think I felt a lot like you do. I still do" (292).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"I dont know. I guess I just believe in it. They sat for a long time. Finally she looked up at him. I told him that we were lovers, she said. The chill that went through him was so cold. The room so quiet. She'd hardly more than whispered yet he felt the silence all around him and he could scarcely look. When he spoke his voice was lost. Why?" (250)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"I know the old man likes you, said Rawlins. But that dome mean he'll set still for you courtin his daughter. Yeah, I know. I dont see you holdin no aces. Yeah. What I see is you fixin to get us fired and run off the place" (138).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"I think I'm goin to move on. This is still good country. Yeah. I know it is. But it aint my country" (299).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"I tried to reason with you, that's all. Tried any number of times. I know you did. But some things aint reasonable. Be that as itmay I'm the same man you crossed that river with. How I was is how I am and all I know to do is stick. I never even promised you you wouldnt die down here. Never asked your word on it either. I dont believe in signing on just till it quits suitin you. You either stick or you quit and I wouldn't quit you I don't care what you done. And thats about all I got to say" (156)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"I won't be treated in such a manner, she said. In that light she looked strange and theatrical" (140).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"Rawlins looked at John Grady. His mouth was tight. John rody watched the small ragged figure vanish limping among he trees with his keepers. There seemed insuffcient substang whim to be the object of men's wrath. There seemed nothing bout him sufficient to fuel any enterprise at all. Dont you say nothin, said Rawlins. All right. Dont you say a damn word. John Grady turned and looked at him. He looked at the guards and he looked at the place where they were, the strange land, the strange sky. All right, he said. I wont" (177)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"The Good Book says that the meek shall inherit the earth and I expect that's probably the truth. I aint no freethinker, but I'll tell you what. I'm a long way from bein convinced that it's all that good a thing" (13)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"The desert he rode was red and red the dust he raised, the small dust that powdered the legs of the horse he rode, the horse he led. In the evening a wind came up and reddened all the sky before him. There were few cattle in that country because it was barren country indeed yet he came at evening upon a solitary bull rolling in the dust against the bloodred sunset like an animal in sacrificial torment. The bloodred dust blew down out of the sun. He touched the horse with his heels and rode on. He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west across the evening land and the small desert birds flew chittering among the dry bracken and horse and rider and horse passed on and their long shadows passed in tandem like the shadow of a single being. Passed and paled into the darkening land, the world to come" (300).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"The prison was no more than a small walled village and within it occurred a constant seethe of barter and exchange in everything from radios and blankets down to matches and buttons and shoenails and within this bartering ran a constant strug. gle for status and position. Underpinning all of it like the fiscal standard in commercial societies lay a bedrock of depravity and violence where in an egalitarian absolute every man was judged by a single standard and that was his readiness to kill. They slept and in the morning it all began again. They fought back to back and picked each other up and fought again. At noon Rawlins could not chew. They're goin to kill us, he said. John Grady mashed beans in a tin can with water till he'd made a gruel out of it and pushed it at Rawlins. You listen to me, he said. Dont you let em think they aint goin to have to. You hear me? I intend to make em kill me. I won't that nothin less. They either got to kill us or let us be. There ain't no middle ground" (182-183).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"The rifle bullet had entered his thigh high up on the outside and the exit wound was in a rotation at the rear such that by turning his leg he could see both wounds clearly. He took up the wet shirt and very carefully wiped away the blood until the wounds were clear and stark as two holes in a mask. The area around the wounds was discolored and looked blue in the firelight and the skin around that was yellow. He leaned and ran a stick through the gripframes of the pistol and swung it up and away from the fire into his shadow and looked at it and then put it back. The captain was sitting holding his arm in his lap and watching him" (274).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"The vaqueros knew them by the way they sat their horses and they called them caballero and exchanged smoking material with them and told them about the country. They drove the cattle on to the west and whitetail deer before them our orig pockets of antelope and whitetail deer before them our of y pands of enormous cottonwoods through which they pass and they moved on until late in the day when they came to, fence and began to drift the cattle south. There was a road on the other side of the fence and in the road were the tracks of tires and the tracks of horses from the recent rains and a young gin came riding down the road and passed them and they ceased talking. She wore english riding boots and jodhpurs and a blue twill hacking jacket and she carried a ridingcrop and the horse she rode was a black Arabian saddlehorse. She'd been riding the horse in the river or in the ciénagas because the horse was wet to its belly and the leather fenders of the saddle were dark at their lower edges and her boots as well. She wore a flatcrowned hat of black felt with a wide brim and her black hair was loose under it and fell halfway to her waist and as she rode past she turned and smiled and touched the brim of the hat with her crop and the vaqueros touched their hatbrims one by one down to the last of those who'd pretended not even to see her as she passed" (93-94)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"The vaqueros were at the table and they got their plates and helped themselves at the stove and got their coffee and came to the table and swung a leg over and sat down. There was a clay dish of tortillas in the center of the table with a towel over it and when John Grady pointed and asked that it be passed there came hands from both sides of the table to take up the dish and hand it down in this manner like a ceremonial bowl" (110)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"There was no sound from the kitchen. She sat watching him. What do you want me to do? he said. I want you to be considerate of a young girl's reputation. I never meant not to be. She smiled. I believe you, she said. But you must under-stand. This is another country. Here a woman's reputation is all she has. Yes mam. There is no forgiveness, you see. Mam? There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot. They sat. She watched him. He tapped the crown of his seated hat with the tips of his four fingers and looked up. I guess I'd have to say that that dont seem right. Right? she said. Oh. Yes. Well. She turned one hand in the air as if reminded of something she'd misplaced. No, she said. No. It's not a matter of right. You must understand. It is a matter of who must say. In this matter I get to say. I am the one who gets to say. The clock ticked in the hall. She sat watching him. He picked up his hat. Well. I guess I ought to say that you didnt have to invite me over just to tell me that. You're quite right, she said. It was because of it that I almost didnt invite you" (137)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"They sent dead people. Crated em up shipped em railway express. It got out of hand. You can't do nothing with a dead person. Only Jesus could do that" (297).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"This man came to me. I dont go to him. He came to me. Speaking of justice. Speaking of the honor of his family. Do you think men truly want these things? I dont think many men want these things. Even so I was surprise. I was surprise. We have no death here for the criminals. Other arrangements must be made. I tell you this because you will be making arrangements you self. John Grady looked up. You are not the first Americans to be here, said the captain. In this place. I have friends in this place and you will be making these arrangements with these peoples. I dont want you to make no mistakes. We dont have any money, said John Grady. We aint fixin to make any arrangements. Excuse me but you will be making some arrangements. You dont know nothing" (180).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"Well suppose you were ill at ease and didnt know why. Would that mean that you might be someplace you wasnt supposed to be and didnt know it? What the hell's wrong with you? I dont know. Nothin. I believe I'll sing. He did. He sang: Will you miss me, will you miss me. Will you miss me when I'm gone" (37).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"What do you aim to do? Rawlins said. I dont know. Nothin. I dont know what you expect. Him two years oldern you. Got his own car and everthing. There aint nothin to him. Never was. What did she say? She didnt say nothin. What would she say? There aint nothin to say. Well I dont know what you expect. I dont expect nothin. Are you goin on Saturday? No. Rawlins took a cigarette out of his shirtpocket and sat up and took a coal from the fire and lit the cigarette. He sat smoking. I wouldnt let her get the best of me, he said" (10)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"What is your opinion of the mares, he said. There's some good mares in that bunch. Yes. Do vou know a horse called Three Bars? That's a thoroughbred horse. You know the horse? I know he run in the Brazilian Grand Prix. I think he come out of Kentucky but he's owned by a man named Vail out of Douglas Arizona" (114)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"What made you set out for Mexico? said Rawlins. Same reason as you. What reason is that? Cause you knowed they'd play hell sowed in oats findin you ass down here. There aint nobody huntin me. Blevins rolled down the leg of his overalls and poked at the fire with a stick. I told that son of a bitch I wouldnt take a whippin off of him and I didnt. Your daddy? My daddy never come back from the war. Your stepdaddy? Yeah. Rawlins leaned forward and spat into the fire. You didnt shoot him did you? I would of. He knowed it too. What was a bulldog doin in a bowlin alley? I didnt get bit in the bowlin alley. I was workin in the bowlin alley, that's all" (64).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"When he reached her she lay in her blood in the grass and he knelt with the rifle and put his hand on her neck and she looked at him and her eyes were warm and wet and there was no fear in them and then she died. He sat watching her for a long time. He thought about the captain and he wondered if he were alive and he thought about Blevins. He thought about Alejandra and he remembered her the first time he ever saw her passing along the ciénaga road in the evening with the horse still wet from her riding it in the lake and he remembered the birds and the cattle standing in the grass and the horses on the mesa. The sky was dark and a cold wind ran through the bajada and in the dying light a cold blue cast had turned the doe's eyes to but one thing more of things she lay among in that darkening landscape. Grass and blood. Blood and stone. Stone and the dark medallions that the first flat drops of rain caused upon them. He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he'd first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he'd presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he'd not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower" (282).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"You dont think there's good and bad things? Things no. I think it is a superstition. It is the superstition of a godless people. You think Americans are godless? Oh yes. Dont you? No. I see them attack their own property. I saw a man one time destroy his car. With a big martillo. What do you call it? Hammer. Because it would not start. Would a Mexican do that? I dont know. A Mexican would not do that. The Mexican does not believe that a car can be good or evil. If there is evil in the car he knows that to destroy the car is to accomplish nothing. Because he knows where good and evil have their home. The anglo thinks in his rare way that the Mexican is superstitious. But who is the one? We know there are qualities to a thing. This car is green. Or it has a certain motor inside. But it cannot be tainted, you see. Or a man. Even a man. There can be in a man some evil. But we dont think it is his own evil. Where did he get it? How did he come to claim it? No. Evil is a true thing in Mexico. It goes about on its own legs. Maybe some day it will come to visit you. Maybe it already has. Maybe. Pérez smiled. You are free to go, he said. I can see you dont believe what I tell you. It is the same with money. Americans have this problem always I believe. They talk about tainted money. But money doesnt have this special quality. And the Mexican would never think to make things special or to put them in a special place where money is no use. Why do this? If money is good money is good. He doesnt have bad money. He doesnt have this problem. This abnormal thought" (194-195).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"You spoke of my disappointments. If such they are they have only made me reckless. My grandniece is the only future I contemplate and where she is concerned I can only put all my chips forward. It may be that the life I desire for her no longer even exists, yet I know what she does not. That there is nothing to lose. In January I will be seventy-three years old. I have known a great many people in that time and few of them led lives that were satisfactory to them. I would like my grandniece to have the opportunity to make a veryALL THE PRETTY HORSES different marriage from the one which her society is bent upon demanding of her. I wont accept a conventional marriage for her. Again, I know what she cannot. That there is nothing to lose. I dont know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful it will make little difference whether she lives at all. And by true I do not mean what is righteous but merely what is so. You think I have rejected your suit because you are young or without education or from another country but that is not the case. I was never remiss in poisoning Alejandra's mind against the conceits of the sorts of suitors available to her and we have both long been willing to entertain the notion of rescue arriving in whatever garb it chose" (239-240).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"You think you know something of my life. An old woman whose past perhaps has left her bitter. Jealous of the happiness of others. It is an ordinary story. But it is not mine. I put forward your cause even in the teeth of the most outrageous tantrums on the part of Alejandra's mother--whom mercifully you have never met. Does that surprise you? Yes. Yes. Were she a more civil person perhaps I'd have been less of an advocate. I am not a society person. The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women. Society is very important in Mexico. Where women do not even have the vote. In Mexico they are mad for society and for politics and very bad at both" (229-230).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"and he stood holding his hat and he called her his abuela and he said goodbye to her in spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead" (301)
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
"the few hacendados who actually lived on the land he claimed, land which had been in his family for one hundred and seventy years. He was forty-seven years old and he was the first male heir in all that new world lineage to attain such an age" (97).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
They caint just walk him out there and shoot him, he said. Hell fire. Just walk him out there and shoot him. John Grady looked at him. As he did so the pistol shot cane from beyond the ebony trees. Not loud. Just a flat sort of pop. Then another. When they came back out of the trees the captain was carry. ing the handcuffs. Vámonos, he called" (178).
"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy
My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way the stone lets me go. I turn that way- I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial' again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
"Facing It" by Komunyakaa
"And it was at that point I noticed young Boughton grinning at me. White as a sheet, and grinning. The text was one I would never have chosen if I'd thought he might be there, though if I'd kept to the sermon as I wrote it, everything would have been better" (130).
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"He lost his Greek Testament in a frantic retreat across a River, as I have said. I always felt there was a metaphor" (90).
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"Here is what he said, standing there with his hair all plastered to his head and his mustache dripping. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is, For brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, That ran down upon the beard; Even Aaron's beard; That came down upon the skirt of his garments Like the dew of Hermon, That cometh down upon the mountains of Zion. That is from Psalm 133. It meant he knew everything I knew, every single word. Perhaps he was telling me that he knew everything I knew and he was not persuaded by it" (64).
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"I have to decide what to tell your mother. I know she is won-dering. He's very nice to her, and to you. And to me. No "Papa" this evening, thank goodness. He's so respectful I feel like telling him I'm not the oldest man in the world yet. Well, I know I'm touchy about some things. I have to try to be fair with him. You look at him as if he were Charles Lindbergh. He keeps calling you little brother, and you love that. I hope there's some special providence in his turning up just when I have so many other things to deal with, because he is a considerable disruption when peace would have been especially appreciated. I'm not complaining. Or I ought not to be." (122)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"I realized that what saw was a full moon rising just as the sun was going down. Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them. It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them. I wanted my father to see it, but I knew I'd have to starttle him out of his prayer, and I wanted to do it the best way, so I took his hand and kissed it. And then I said, "Look at the moon." And he did. We just stood there until the sun was down and the moon was up. They seemed to float on the horizon for quite a long time, I suppose because they were both so bright you couldn't get a clear look at them. And that grave, and my father and I, were exactly between them, which seemed amazing to me at the time, since I hadn't given much thought to the nature of the horizon. My father said, "I would never have thought this place could be beautiful. I'm glad to know that." (14-15)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"I would point out again that it is the consistent example of parents in the Bible that they honor their children. I think it is notable in this connection that it is not Adam but the Lord who rebukes Cain. Eli never rebukes his sons, or Samuel his. David never rebukes Absalom. At the very end, poor old Jacob rebukes his sons as he blesses them. A remark. able thing to consider. There's a sermon here. The Prodigal Son as the Gospel text. I should ask Boughton if he has noticed this. But of course he has, of course he has. I must give that more thought" (136)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"Most of the young men seemed to feel that the war was a courageous thing, and maybe new wars have come along since I wrote this that have seemed brave to you. That there have been wars I have no doubt. I believe that plague was a great sign to us, and we refused to see it and take its meaning, and since then we have had war continuously" (43)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"Old Boughton is so eager to see him. Perhaps anxious as well as eager. He has some fine children, yet it always seemed this was the one on whom he truly set his heart. The lost sheep, the lost coin. The prodigal son, not to put too fine a point on it. I have said at least once a week my whole adult life that there is an absolute disjunction between our Father's love and our deserving. Still, when I see this same disjunction between human parents and children, it always irritates me a lit-tle. (I know you will be and I hope you are an excellent man, and I will love you absolutely if you are not.)" (73)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"One sermon is not up there, one I actually burned the night before I had meant to preach it" (41)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"Sometimes I could just make out half a play, and then static, and then a crowd roaring, a flat little sound, almost static itself, like that empty sound in a seashell. It felt good to me to imagine it, like working out some intricate riddle in my mind, planetary motion. If the ball is drifting toward left field and there are runners on first and third, then moving the runners and the catcher and the shortstop in my mind. I loved to do that, I can't explain why" (44)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"The history of the church is very complex, very mingled. I want you to know how aware I am of that fact. These days there are so many people who think loyalty to religion is benighted, if it is not worse than benighted. I am aware of that, and I know the charges that can be brought against the churches are powerful. And I know, too, that my own experience of the church has been, in many senses, sheltered and parochial. In every sense, unless really is a universal and transcendent life, unless the bread is Ames-son the bread and the cup is the cup everywhere, in all circumstances, and it is a time with the Lord in Gethsemane that comes for everyone, as I deeply believe. That biscuit ashy from my father's charred hand. It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for. If I could only give you what my father gave me. No, what the Lord has given me and must also give you. But I hope you will put yourself in the way of the gift. I am not speaking here of the ministry as such, as I have said" (114)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"The old man shrugged. "Nothing in it to offend. I wanted to hear some preaching. So I went over to the Negro church." After a minute my father asked, "Well, did you hear some preaching?" My grandfather shrugged. "The text was 'Love your enemies.' " "That seems to me to be an excellent text in the circumstances," my father said. This was just after somebody set that fire behind the church that I mentioned earlier. The old man said, "Very Christian. My father said, "You sound disappointed, Reverend." My grandfather put his head in his hands. He said, "Reverend, no words could be bitter enough, no day could be long enough. There is just no end to it. Disappointment. I eat and drink it. I wake and sleep it." My father's lips were white. He said, "Well, Reverend, I know you placed great hope in that war. My hopes are in peace, and I am not disappointed. Because peace is its own reward. Peace is its own justification." My grandfather said, "And that's just what kills my heart, Reverend. That the Lord never came to you. That the seraphim never touched a coal to your lips" My father stood up from his chair. He said, "I remember when you walked to the pulpit in that shot-up, bloody shirt with that pistol in your belt. And I had a thought as powerful and clear as any revelation. And it was, This has nothing to do with Jesus. Nothing. Nothing. And I was, and I am, as certain of that as anyone could ever be of any so-called vision. I defer to no one in this. Not to you, not to Paul the Apostle, not to John the Divine. Reverend." My grandfather said, "So-called vision. The Lord, standing there beside me, had one hundred times the reality for me that you have standing here now!" After a minute my father said, "No one would doubt that, Reverend." And that was when a chasm truly opened. Not long afterward my grandfather was gone. He left a note lying on the kitchen table which said: No good has come, no evil is ended. That is your peace. Without vision the people perish. The Lord bless you and keep you" (84-85)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"The parents of these young soldiers would come to me and ask me how the Lord could allow such a thing. I felt like asking them what the Lord would have to do to tell us He didn't allow something. But instead I would comfort them by saying we would never know what their young men had been spared. Most of them took me to mean they were spared the trenches and the mustard gas, but what I really meant was that they were spared the act of killing. It was just like a biblical plague, just exactly. I thought of Sennacherib" (41-42)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"This week I intend to preach on Genesis 21:14-21, which is the story of Hagar and Ishmael. If these were ordinary times- if I were twenty years younger -I'd be making an or. derly passage through the Gospels and the Epistles before I turned to Genesis again. That was my custom, and I have always felt it was effective as teaching, which is really what all this is about. Now, though, I talk about whatever is on my mind- Hagar and Ishmael at the moment. The story of Hagar and Ishmael came to mind while I was praying this morning, and I found a great assurance in it. The story says that it is not only the father of a child who cares for its life, who protects its mother" (118)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonist, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demon. strate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dic. tate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it. I am reminded of this precious instruction by my own great failure to live up to it recently/Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance do we perform it? I suppose Calvin's God was a Frenchman, just as mine is a Middle Westerner of New England extraction. Well, we all bring such light to bear on these great matters as we can. I do like Calvin's image, though, because it suggests how God might actually enjoy us" (124).
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"You had his mitt, a fine new fielder's mitt that reached almost to your elbow, and he had that old glove of Edward's that I keep on my desk. No webbing at all, no pocket to speak of. It's an oversight of mine that I haven't gotten you a glove of your own. I'lI see to that. Young Boughton was teaching you to scoop up grounders, probably to cover for the fact that you weren't likely to actually catch anything on the fly. You were being very earnest about it all, running hither and thither on those clever child legs of yours, and he was saying, "Come on, come on," and pounding his glove, and then, in a sportscaster's voice, "He's rounding second, folks. Will the throw be in time?" And you would lose the ball again, and he would say, "This is amazing, folks. The runner appears to have tripped on his shoelace! He's down! He's taking a while to catch his breath! Now he's up, he's headed for the plate!" He would say, "He's dragging his left leg, folks, he's hopping on one foot!" And by then you were giggling considerably, but you got the ball to him finally, and he said, "Well, folks, that runner's out!" It was beautiful to watch you two in the flickering shade" (101)
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
"But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds winding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in ambush as a cool, impassive moon rises over the nighttime paddies. You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket's red glare. It's not pretty, exactly. It's astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference -a powerful, implacable beauty and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly. To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness. The trees are alive. The grass, the soil--everything. All around you things are purely living, and you among them, and the aliveness makes you tremble. You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self -your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it. In the midst of evil you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human con-cord, things you never knew you wanted. There is a kind of largeness to it, a kind of godliness. Though it's odd, you're never more alive than when you're almost dead. You recognize what's valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what's best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not. Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel—the spiritual texture—of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can't tell where you are, or why you're there, and only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity. In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true. Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn't hit you until twenty years later" (881).
"How to tell a true war story" O'Brian
"It's hard to tell you what happened next. They were just goofing. There was a noise, I suppose, which mustve been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms" (876) "The guys cant cope. They lose it. They get on the radio and report enemy movement —a whole army, they say —and they order up the firepower. They get arty and gunships. They call in air strikes. And Flltell you, they ****in grash that cocktail party. All night long, they just smoke those mountains. They make jungle juice. They blow away trees and glee clubs and whaterer else there is to blow away. Scorch time" (878).
"How to tell a true war story" O'Brian
"Like that ****** colonel. The politicians, all the civilian types. Your girlfriend. My girlfriend. Everybody's sweet little virgin girlfriend. Wh. they need is to go out on LP. The vapors, man. Trees and rocks—you got to listen to your enemy" (879).
"How to tell a true war story" O'Brian
"That quiet—just listen. There's your moral" (879).
"How to tell a true war story" O'Brian
"This one wakes me up. In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn sideways. He laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree. The parts were just hanging there, so Dave Jensen and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I remember the white bone of an arm. I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that must've been the intestines. The gore was horrible, and stays with me. But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing "Lemon Tree" as we threw down the parts" (882)
"How to tell a true war story" O'Brian
"You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever. Not when Mitchell Sanders stood up and moved off into the dark. It all happened" (878)
"How to tell a true war story" O'Brian
On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams" Never made the swelling go down. His carpenter's apron always bulged With old nails, a claw hammer Looped at his side & extension cords Coiled around his feet. Words rolled from under the pressure Of my ballpoint: Love, Baby, Honey, Please. We sat in the quiet brutality Of voltage meters & pipe threaders, Lost between sentences . . • The gleam of a five-pound wedge On the concrete floor Pulled a sunset Through the doorway of his toolshed. I wondered if she laughed & held them over a gas burner. My father could only sign His name, but he'd look at blueprints & say how many bricks Formed each wall. This man, Who stole roses & hyacinth For his yard, would stand there With eyes closed & fists balled, Laboring over a simple word, almost Redeemed by what he tried to say.
"My Father's Love Letters" by Komunyakaa
"By now there are several Negroes around, reading the signs and watching. "Just beginning to get annoyed, are you?" one of the Mime Troupers says. "Don't you think it's about time?" "Nobody stole Chuck Berry's music, man, says another Negro who has been studying the signs. "Chuck Berry's music belongs to everybody." "Yeh?" a girl in blackface says. "Everybody who?" "Why," he says, confused. "Everybody. In America." "In America," the blackface girl shrieks. "Listen to him talk about America." "Listen," he says helplessly. "Listen here." "What'd America ever do for you?" the girl in blackface jeers. "White kids here, they can sit in the Park all summer long, listening to the music they stole, because their bigshot parents keep sending them money. Who ever sends vou money?" (1019).
"Slouching Towards Bethlehem" by Joan Didion
"Listen," Victor said and handed Thomas the cardboard box which contained half of his father. "I want you to have this." Thomas took the ashes and smiled, closed his eyes, and told this story: "I'm going to travel to Spokane Falls one last time and toss these ashes into the water. And your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way home. It will be beautiful. His teeth will shine like silver, like a rainbow. He will rise, Victor, he will rise." Victor smiled. "I was planning on doing the same thing with my half," Victor said. "But I didn't imagine my father looking anything like a salmon. I thought it'd be like cleaning the attic or something. Like letting things go after they've stopped having any use." "Nothing stops, cousin," Thomas said. "Nothing stops baked Thomas Builds-the Fire got out of the pickup and walked up his drive-way. Victor started the pickup and began the drive home" (1071)
"This is what it means to say Phoenix Arizona" by Sherman Alexie
"Thomas Builds-the-Fire closed his eyes and told this story: "I remember when I had this dream that told me to go to Spokane, to stand by the Falls in the middle of the city and wait for a sign. I knew I had to go there but I didnt have a car. Didn't have a license. I was only thirteen. So I walked all the way, took me all day, and I finally made it to the Falls. I stood there for an hour waiting. Then your dad came walking up. What the hell are you doing here? he asked me. I said, Waiting for a vision. Then your father said, All you're going to get here is mugged. So he drove me over to Denny's, bought me dinner, and then drove me home to the reservation. For a long time I was mad because I thought my dreams had lied to me. But they didn't. Your dad was my vision. Take care of each other is what my dreams were saying. Take care of each other" Victor was quiet for a long time. He searched his mind for memories of his father, found the good ones, found a few bad ones, added it all up, and smiled" (1068)
"This is what it means to say Phoenix Arizona" by Sherman Alexie
"Thomas closed his eyes and this story came to him: "We are all given one thing by which our lives are measured, one determination. Mine are the stories which can change or not change the world. It doesn't matter which as long as I continue to tell the stories. My father, he died on Okinawa™ in World War II, died fighting for this country, which had tried to kill him for years. My mother, she died giving birth to me, died while I was still inside her. She pushed me out into the world with her last breath. I have no brothers or sisters. I have only my stories which came to me before I even had the words to speak. I learned a thousand stories before I took my first thousand steps. They are all I have. It's all I can do." Thomas Builds-the-Fire told his stories to all those who would stop and listen. He kept telling them long after people had stopped listening" (1071)
"This is what it means to say Phoenix Arizona" by Sherman Alexie
"While Victor stood in line, he watched Thomas Builds-the-Fire standing near the magazine rack, talking to himself. Like he always did. Thomas was a storyteller that nobody wanted to listen to. That's like being a dentist in a town where everybody has false teeth. Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire were the same age, had grown up and played in the dirt together. Ever since Victor could remember, it was Thomas who always had something to say. Once, when they were seven years old, when Victor's father still lived with the family, Thomas closed his eyes and told Victor this story:' "Your father's heart is weak. He is afraid of his own family. He is afraid of you. Late at night he sits in the dark. Watches the television until there's nothing but that white noise. Sometimes he feels like he wants to buy a motorcycle and ride away. He wants to run and hide. He doesn't want to be found." • Thomas Builds-the-Fire had known that Victor's father was going to leave, knew it before anyone" (1064)
"This is what it means to say Phoenix Arizona" by Sherman Alexie
"But you said we have a situation." call a massive data-base tally. Gladney, J. A. K. I punch in the name, the substance, the exposure time and then tap into your computer history. Your genetics, your personals, your medicals, your psychologicals, your olive and hospitals. It comes back pulsing stars. This doesn't mean anything is going to happen to you as such, at least not today or tomorrow. It just means you are the sum total of your data. No man escapes that." "And this massive so-called tally is not a simulation despite that armband you're wearing. It is real." "It is real," he said. I stood absolutely still. If they thought I was already dead, they might be inclined to leave me alone. I think I felt as I would if a doctor had held an X-ray to the light showing a star shaped hole at the center of one of my dan organs. Death has entered. It is inside you. You are said to be dying and yet when death is rendered graphically, is televised so to speak, that you sense an eerie separation between your condition and yourself. A network of sum: symbols has been introduced, an entire awesome technology wrested from the Off gods. It makes you feel like a stranger in your own dying, I wanted my academic gown and dark glasses (716).
"White Noise" by Don DeLiLLo
"It was said that we would be allowed to go home first thing in the morn-ing; that the government was engaged in a cover-up; that a helicopter had entered the toxic cloud and never reappeared; that the dogs had arrived from New Mexico, parachuting into a meadow in a daring night drop; that the town of Farmington would be uninhabitable for forty years. Remarks existed in a state of permanent flotation. No one thing was either more or less plausible than any other thing. As people jolted out of reality, we were released from the need to distinguish" (708).
"White Noise" by Don DeLiLLo
"It's like we've been flung back in time," he said. "Here we are in the Stone Age, knowing all these great things after centuries of progress but what can we do to make life easier for the Stone Agers? Can we make a refrigerator? Can we even explain how it works? What is electricity? What is light: we find ourselves hurled back in time and we can't even tell people the basic principles, much less actually make something that would improve conditions. Name one thing you could make. Could you make a simple wooden match that you could strike on a rock to make a flame? We think we're so great and modern. Moon landings, artificial hearts. But what if you were hurled into a time warp and came face to face with the ancient Greeks. The Greeks invented trigonometry. They did autopsies and dissections. What could you tell an ancient Greek that he couldn't say, 'Big deal' Could you tell him about the atom? Atom is a Greek word. The Greeks knew that the major events in the universe can't be seen by the eye of man. It's waves, it's rays, it's particles." "We're doing all right." "We're sitting in this huge moldy room. It's like we're flung back." "We have heat, we have light" (720).
"White Noise" by Don DeLiLLo
"There are known degrees of exposure. I'd say their situation is they're minimal risks. It's the two and a half minutes standing right in it that makes me wince. Actual skin and orifice contact. This is Nyodene D. A whole new generation of toxic waste. What we call state of the art. One part per million million can send a rat into a permanent state" (714).
"White Noise" by Don DeLiLLo
""Tell me," said Beloved, smiling a wide happy smile, "Tell me your diamonds. "It became a way to feed her. Just as Denver discovered and relied on the delightful effect sweet things had on Beloved, Sethe learned the profound satisfaction Beloved got from storytelling. It amazed Sethe (as much as it pleased Beloved) because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost. She and Baby Suggs had agreed without saying so that it was unspeakable; to Denver's inquiries Sethe gave short replies or rambling incomplete reveries. Even with Paul D, who had shared some of it and to whom she could talk with at least a measure of calm, the hurt was always there" (69)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"After I left you, those boys came in there and took my milk. That's what they came in there for. Held me down and took it. I told Mrs. Garner on em. She had that lump and couldn't speak but her eyes rolled out tears. Them boys found out I told on em. Schoolteacher made one open up my back and when it closed it made a tree. It grows there still." "They used cowhide on you?" "And they took my milk." "They beat you and you was pregnant?" "And they took my milk!" (20)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"Bought em thataway, raised em that-away. Men every one." Beg to differ, Garner. Ain't no ****** men." "Not if you scared, they ain't." Garner's smile was wide. "But if you a man yourself, you'll want your ******s to be men too." "I wouldn't have no ****** men round my wife." It was the reaction Garner loved and waited for. "Neither would I," he said. "Neither would I," and there was always a pause before the neighbor, or stranger, or peddler, or brother-in-law or whoever it was got the meaning. Then a fierce argu-ment, sometimes a fight" (12)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"Don't ask me what whitefolks need at night." "They used to be good whitefolks." "Oh, yeah. They good. Can't say they ain't good. I wouldn't trade them for another pair, tell you that." With those assurances, Denver left, but not before she had seen, sitting on a shelf by the back door, a blackboy's mouth full of money" (300)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"How come everybody run off from Sweet Home can't stop talking about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed." "Girl, who you talking to?" Paul D laughed. "True, true. She's right, Sethe. It wasn't sweet and it sure wasn't home." He shook his head. "But it's where we were," said Sethe. "All together" (15)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running--from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me? It cost too much. Now sit down and eat with us or leave us be." (18)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a ****** woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. She did not look at them; she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time, when out of nowhere-in the ticking time the men spent staring at what there was to stare at--the old ****** boy, still mewing, ran through the door behind them and snatched the baby from the arc of its mother's swing. Right off it was clear, to schoolteacher especially, that there was nothing there to claim. The three (now four-because she'd had the one coming when she cut) pickaninnies they had hoped were alive and well enough to take back to resty to Kentucky, take back and raise properly to do the work Sweet Home desperately needed, were not. Two were lying open-eyed in sawdust; a third pumped blood down the dress of the main one-the woman schoolteacher bragged about, the one he said made fine ink, damn good soup, pressed his collars the way he liked besides having at least ten breeding years left. But now she'd gone wild, due to the mishandling of the nephew who'd overbeat her and made her cut and run" (176)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"Maybe. But if she'd only come, I could make it clear to her." Sethe released her daughter's hand and together they pushed the sideboard back against the wall. Outside a driver whipped his horse into the gallop local people felt necessary when they passed 124" (5)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"Nothing better than that to start the days serious work of beating back the past" (86)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow." He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe. You are." His holding fingers are holding hers. "Me? Me?" (322)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"So Stamp Paid didn't say it all. Instead he took a breath and leaned toward the mouth that was not hers and slowly read out the words Paul D couldn't. And when he finished, Paul D said with a vigor fresher than the first time, "I'm sorry, Stamp. It's a mistake somewhere 'cause that ain't her mouth." Stamp looked into Paul D's eyes and the sweet conviction in them almost made him wonder if it had happened at all, eighteen years ago, that while he and Baby Suggs were looking the wrong way, a pretty little slavegirl had recognized a hat, and split to the woodshed to kill her children" (186)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"Tell me the truth. Didn't you come from the other side? Yes. I was on the other side. You came back because of me? Yes. You rememory me? Yes. I remember you. You never forgot me? Your face is mine. Do you forgive me? Will you stay? You safe here now. Where are the men without skin? Out there. Way off. white People Can they get in here? No. They tried that once, but I stopped them. They won't ever come back. One of them was in the house I was in. He hurt me. They can't hurt us no more. Where are your earrings? They took them from me. The men without skin took them? Yes. I was going to help you but the clouds got in the way. There're no clouds here. If they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away Beloved" (254)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"The girl shook her hair out of her face. "My mama worked for these here people to pay for her passage. But then R she had me and since she died right after, well, they said I had to work for em to pay it off. I did, but now I want me some velvet" (40)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"The nephew, the one who had nursed her while his brother held her down, didn't know he was shaking. His un. cle had warned him against that kind of confusion, but the warning didn't seem to be taking. What she go and do tha for? On account of a beating? Hell, he'd been beat a million times and he was white. Once it hurt so bad and made him so mad he'd smashed the well bucket. Another time he took it out on Samson--a few tossed rocks was all. But no beating ever made him ... I mean no way he could have ... What she go and do that for? And that is what he asked the sheriff, who was standing there amazed like the rest of them, but not shak-ing. He was swallowing hard, over and over again. "What she want to go and do that for?" The sheriff turned, then said to the other three, "You all better go on. Look like your business is over. Mine's started now." (176-177)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"There had been six of them who belonged to the farm, Sethe the only female. Mrs. Garner, crying like a baby, had sold his brother to pay off the debts that surfaced the minute she was widowed. Then the schoolteacher arrived to put things in order. But what he did broke three more Sweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of Sethe's eyes, leaving two open wells that did not reflect firelight" (11)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"We are not crouching now we are standing but my legs are like my dead man's eyes I cannot fall because there is no room to the men without skin are making loud noises I am not dead the bread is sea-colored I am too hungry to eat it the sun closes my eyes those able to die are in a pile I cannot find my man the one whose teeth I have loved a hot thing the little hill of dead people a hot thing the men without skin push them through with poles the woman is there with the face I want the face that is mine they fall into the sea which is the color of the bread she has nothing in her ears if I had the teeth of the man who died on my face I would bite the circle around her neck bite it away know she does not like it now there is room to crouch and to watch the crouching others it is the crouching that is now always now inside the woman with my face is in the sea a hot thing" (249)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"We have a ghost in here," she said, and it worked. They were not a twosome anymore. Her mother left off swinging her feet and being girlish. Memory of Sweet Home dropped away from the eyes of the man she was being girlish for. He looked quickly up the lightning-white stairs behind her. "So I hear," he said. "But sad, your mama said. Not evil." "No sir," said Denver, "not evil. But not sad either." "What then?" "Rebuked. Lonely and rebuked." (16)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"What, baby?" "She left me." "Aw, girl. Don't cry." "She was my best thing." Paul D sits down in the rocking chair and examines the quilt patched in carnival colors. His hands are limp between his knees" (321)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"When she could only guess, Denver followed her directions and went to say thank you anyway-whether she had the right benefactor or not. When she was wrong, when the person said, "No, darling. That's not my bowl. Mine's got a blue ring on it," a small conversation took place. All of them knew her grandmother and some had even danced with her in the Clearing. Others remembered the days when 124 was a way station" (293)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"Who Janey tell him the naked woman was?" "Told him she didn't see none." "You believe they saw it?" «Well, they saw something. I trust Ella anyway, and she say she looked it in the eye. It was standing right next to Sethe. But from the way they describe it, don't seem like it was the girl I saw in there. The girl I saw was narrow. This one was big. She say they was holding hands and Sethe looked like a little girl beside it." "Little girl with a ice pick. How close she get to him?" "Right up on him, they say. Before Denver and them grabbed her and Ella put her fist in her jaw." "He got to know Sethe was after him. He got to." "Maybe. I don't know. If he did think it, I reckon he decided not to. That be just like him, too. He's somebody never turned us down. Steady as a rock. I tell you something, if she had got to him, it'd be the worst thing in the world for us. You know, don't you, he's the main one kept Sethe from the gallows in the first place." (312)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"a white dress knelt down next to her mother and had its sleeve around her mother's waist. And it was the tender embrace of the dress sleeve that made Denver remember the details of her birth--that and the thin, whipping snow she was standing in, like the fruit of common flowers" (35)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"and After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, "Let the children come!" and they ran from the trees toward her. "Let your mothers hear you laugh," she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling. Then "Let the grown men come," she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees. "Let your wives and your children see you dance," she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet. Finally she called the women to her. "Cry," she told them. "For the living and the dead. Just cry." And without covering their eyes the women let loose" (103)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"and younger than her clothes suf: gested- -good lace at the throat, and a rich woman's hat. Her skin was flawless except for three vertical scratches on her forehead so fine and thin they seemed at first like hair, baby hair before it bloomed and roped into the masses of black yarn under her hat" (62)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"red and undulating light that locked him where he stood. "You got company?" he whispered, frowning. "Off and on," said Sethe. "Good God." He backed out the door onto the porch. "What kind of evil you got in here?" "It's not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through." (10)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
"standing alone on the porch, Beloved is smiling. But now her hand is empty. Sethe is running away from her, running, and she feels the emptiness in the hand Sethe has been hold-ing. Now she is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind. Alone. Again. Then Denver, running too. Away from her to the pile of people out there. They make a hill. A hill of black people, falling. And above them all, rising from his place with a whip in his hand,, the man without skin, looking. He is looking at her" (309)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Years ago when 124 was alive -she had women friends, men friends from all around to share grief with. Then there was no one, for they would not visit her while the baby ghost filled the house, and she returned their disapproval with the potent pride of the mistreated. But now there was some. one to share it, and he had beat the spirit away the very day he entered her house and no sign of it since. A vicosg, but its place he brought another kind of haunting: Halle's face smeared with butter and the clabber too; his own mouth jammed full of iron, and Lord knows what else he could tell her if he wanted to. The fingers touching the back of her neck were stronger now--the strokes bolder as though Baby Suggs were gathering strength. Putting the thumbs at the nape, while the fingers pressed the sides. Harder, harder, the fingers moved slowly around toward her windpipe, making little circles on the way. Sethe was actually more surprised than frightened to find that she was being strangled. Or so it seemed. In any case, Baby Suggs' fingers had a grip on her that would not let her breathe" (113)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
yourself Beloved?" Beloved closed her eyes. "In the dark my name is Be-loved." Denver scooted a little closer. "What's it like over there, where you were before? Can you tell me?" "Dark," said Beloved. "I'm small in that place. I'm like this here." She raised her head off the bed, lay down on her side and curled up. Denver covered her lips with her fingers. "Were you cold?" Beloved curled tighter and shook her head. "Hot. Nothing to breathe down there and no room to move in." "You see anybody?" "Heaps. A lot of people is down there. Some is dead." "You see Jesus? Baby Suggs?" "I don't know. I don't know the names." She sat up. "Tell me, how did you get here?" "I wait; then I got on the bridge. I stay there in the dark, in the daytime, in the dark, in the daytime. It was a long time (88)
Beloved by Toni Morrison
