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323f947 His clock was set on pioneer time. He met trains that had not yet arrived, he waited on platforms that hadn't yet been built, beside tracks that might never be laid. Wallace Stegner
fd3f56b Pleasant things to hear, though hearing them from him embarrasses me. I soak up the praise but feel obliged to disparage the gift. I believe that most people have some degree of talent for something--forms, colors, words, sounds. Talent lies around in us like kindling waiting for a match, but some people, just as gifted as others, are less lucky. Fate never drops a match on them. The times are wrong, or their health is poor, or their energy.. Wallace Stegner
7ab2d4e I know no way of discounting the doctrine that when you take something you want, and damn the consequences, then you had better be ready to accept whatever consequences ensue. Wallace Stegner
f70c389 This early piece of the morning is mine. Wallace Stegner
f7aca10 One thing I have learned hard, if indeed I have learned it now: it is a reduction of our humanity to hide from pain, our own or others'. To hide from anything. That was Marian's text. Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around in your bones. Wallace Stegner
2007420 Well, there's so much to read, and I'm so far behind. Wallace Stegner
cab848b Nothing is so safe as habit, even when habit is faked. Wallace Stegner
e43e3fd What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. T.. intersection life-lines love marriage married-life matrimony parallels perspective pride resignation separation Wallace Stegner
11bdec8 Though I have been busy, perhaps overbusy, all my life, it seems to me now that I have accomplished little that matters, that the books have never come up to what was in my head, and that the rewards--the comfortable income, the public notice, the literary prizes, and the honorary degrees--have been tinsel, not what a grown man should be content with. adulthood life Wallace Stegner
4852109 It reminds me too much of how little life changes: how, without dramatic events or high resolves, without tragedy, without even pathos, a reasonably endowed, reasonable well-intentioned man can walk through the world's great kitchen from end to end and arrive at the back door hungry. Wallace Stegner
4fe71d8 There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance ... some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone. happiness harmony keystones love marriage married-life matrimony support togetherness Wallace Stegner
5cd2415 I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband. husbands inequality inferiority marriage matrimony perception wives Wallace Stegner
cb895a0 The deep ecologists warn us not to be anthropocentric, but I know no way to look at the world, settled or wild, except through my own human eyes. I know that is wasn't created especially for my use, and I share the guilt for what members of my species, especially the migratory ones, have done to it. But I am the only instrument that I have access to by which I can enjoy the world and try to understand it. So I must believe that, at least to.. Wallace Stegner
d205e54 Sally has a smile I would accept as my last view on earth... Wallace Stegner
30c734e There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic. When you stand outside a door and push the button, something has to happen. Someone must respond; whatever is inside must be revealed. Questions will be answered, uncertainties or mysteries dispelled. A situation will be started on its way through unknown complications to an unpredictable conclusion. The answer to your summons may be to a rush of tearful welcome.. Wallace Stegner
a3d0dcd There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing. greed illusion Wallace Stegner
e16a2d2 How do I know what I think till I see what I say? Wallace Stegner
374c8a9 After all, what are any of us after but the conviction of belonging? yearning Wallace Stegner
d2d01b5 People, he had said, were always being looked at as points, and they ought to be looked at as lines. There weren't any points, it was false to assume that a person ever was anything. He was always becoming something, always changing, always continuous and moving, like the wiggly line on a machine used to measure earthquake shocks. He was always what he was in the beginning, but never quite exactly what he was; he moved along a line dictated.. Wallace Stegner
9131fba Salt is added to dried rose petals with the perfume and spices, when we store them away in covered jars, the summers of our past. past Wallace Stegner
0f65840 It happens that I despise that locution, "having sex," which describes something a good deal more mechanical than making love and a good deal less fun than fucking." Wallace Stegner
f746c09 It is almost impossible to write fiction about the Mormons, for the reason that Mormon institutions and Mormon society are so peculiar that they call for constant explanation. Wallace Stegner
471d01f There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic. Wallace Stegner
3984234 Before I can say , I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were -- inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and mo.. family heritage identity morality past personal-history personality predispositions values Wallace Stegner
ea9fedb Are writers reporters, prophets, crazies, entertainers, preachers, judges, what? Wallace Stegner
a0f0707 If you could forget mortality... You could really believe that time is circular, and not linear and progressive as our culture is bent on proving. Seen in geological perspective, we are fossils in the making, to be buried and eventually exposed again for the puzzlement of creatures of later eras. culture literature Wallace Stegner
33ab93b I hope they have found enough pleasure along the way so that they don't want it ended Wallace Stegner
6f636cc It was as if she had thought him into existence again, as if her mind were a flask into which had been poured a measure of longing, a measure of discontent, a measure of fatigue, a dash of bitterness, and pouf, there he stood. longing love Wallace Stegner
a34c1d6 I find it hard to describe what it is like to look fully into eyes that one has known that well--known better than one knows the look of one's own eyes, actually--and then put away, deliberately forgotten. That instantly reasserted intimacy, that resumption of what looks like friendly concern, is like nakedness, like exposure. intimacy transparency Wallace Stegner
25a10f4 Satisfying natural desires is fine, but natural desires have a way of being both competitive and consequential. Wallace Stegner
225dc7b It is not an unusual life curve for Westerners - to live i n and be shaped by the bigness, sparseness, space clarity & hopefulness of the West, to go away for study and enlargement and the perspective that distance and dissatisfaction can give, and then to return to what pleases the sight and enlists the loyalty and demands the commitment. life-and-living philosophy vastness west western Wallace Stegner
c4427b4 Children from a big family have the benefit of a certain amount of neglect. Wallace Stegner
02e113b Ruth believes that boys are not found around stables because what they like is taking things apart and putting them together again, and for this purpose horses are not so satisfactory as cars, motorcycles, and even bicycles, while girls adore horses because they are biological and have functions. Wallace Stegner
8f7e6ee Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a by-product, something the reader himself is led to formulate after watching the story unfold. The ideas, the generalizations, ought to be implicit in the selection and arrangement of the people and places and actions. They ought to haunt a piece of fiction as a ghost fli.. generalizations ideas subject-matter writing Wallace Stegner
d8eca8a There is some history that I want not to have happened. I resist the consequences of being Nemesis. consequences destiny fate history Wallace Stegner
f588df6 To have so little, and it of so little value, was to be quaintly free. materialism possessions Wallace Stegner
732c4de I can't see that Danish episode as an adventure, or a crisis survived, or a serious quest for anything definable. It was just another happening like today's luncheon, something I got into and got out of. And it reminds me too much of how little life changes: how, without dramatic events or high resolves, without tragedy, without even pathos, a reasonably endowed, reasonably well-intentioned man can walk through the world's great kitchen fro.. life-experience life-lessons living Wallace Stegner
fef04f0 I'm not writing a book of Western history,' I tell him. 'I've written enough history books to know this isn't one. I'm writing about something else. A marriage, I guess. Deadwood was just a blank space in the marriage. Why waste time on it?' Rodman is surprised. So am I, actually -- I have never formulated precisely what it is I have been doing, but the minute I say it I know I have said it right. What interests me in all these papers is no.. Wallace Stegner
a2fa30b Homesickness is a great teacher. It taught me, during an endless rainy fall, that I came from the arid lands, and like where I came from. I was used to dry clarity and sharpness in the air. I was used to horizons that either lifted into jagged ranges or rimmed the geometrical circle of the flat world. I was used to seeing a long way. I was used to earth colors--tan, rusty red, toned white--and the endless green of Iowa offended me. I was us.. Wallace Stegner
971be76 There is one thing above all others that I despise. It is fingers, especially female fingers, messing around in my guts. My guts, like Victorian marriage, are private. Wallace Stegner
b1394c0 Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn't struck you. Wallace Stegner
305c98f After a day and a half or so the traveler will realize that crossing the continent by Interstate he gets to know the country about as well as a cable messenger knows the sea bottom. Wallace Stegner
003932f The clear lesson of New England's history is that when there are not enough suitable men around to run the world, women are perfectly capable of doing so. Wallace Stegner
b3a591b Survival, it is called. Often it is accidental, sometimes it is engineered by creatures or forces that we have no conception of, always it is temporary. philosophy survival Wallace Stegner
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