IF a Stone

@dougray7.bsky.social

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Author of Timberline (https://timberlinethenovel.com) "I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point -- race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.' ~ Molly Ivins

I give myself to adjectives body and soul, I die with pleasure for them. Violette Leduc, Mad in Pursuit
All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
"It's always taken a lot out of me, being smart." Eudora Welty, The Ponder Heart
Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your ass or publicizing it: keep cool, but care. Thomas Pynchon, V
"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
When things go wrong and will not come right, Though you do the best you can, When life looks black as the hour of night, A pint of plain is your only man. Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
You cannot make a revolution with half-measures or by doing the safe thing. William Butler, The Butterfly Revolution
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas. Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. ~ Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is. Jorge Luis Borges, A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz
“They're such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I've never seen such - such beautiful shirts before.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air. or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.” ― Willa Cather, My Antonia
Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower. Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers
She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered .... Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
"By what right do I, who have wasted this day, make claims on tomorrow?" Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes
It is true error to marry with poets or to be by them. John Berryman, Dream Song 187
This is a nervous little decade we're playing with .... Richard Farina, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
Time's Arrow, by Martin Amis
To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape. John Fowles, The Magus
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means. ~ Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
"There are different ways of evil and I prefer mine to yours." E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. ― Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Beware the fury of a patient man. John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel
Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself. If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She is audible to all men, at all times, in all places, and if we will we may always hearken to her admonitions. Henry David Thoreau, Journals
"Your heart, Bessie, is an autumn garage." J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
The Matisse Stories, by A.S. Byatt
By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear. Dare to look in thy chest; for 'tis thine own: And tumble up and down what thou find'st there. ~ George Herbert, The Church Porch
I'm tired of people who have not been at war who know all about it. John Steinbeck, The Moon Is Down
A Son of the Circus, by John Irving
He disliked this girl and her boy-friend so much that he couldn't understand why they didn't dislike each other. Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl
While there's life there is hope, truly; but there is fear, too. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
“Nobody hates us as ourselves. … They don't hate us because we did something or said something. They make us stand for an evil they invent and then they want to kill it in us.” Marge Piercy, Gone to Soldiers
We Were the Mulvaneys, by Joyce Carol Oates
In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love. Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency
The Rum Diary, by Hunter S. Thompson
“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.” Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt. John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World
Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks
It’s impossible to control a narrative once it’s been set in motion. All you can do is follow its telling until the very last second. ~ Frode Grytten, The Ferryman and his Wife (trans. Alixon McCullough)
Mao II, by Don DeLillo
One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human. Loren Eiseley, The Unexpected Universe
Immorality, by Milan Kundera
They were going to look at war, the red animal -- war, the blood-swollen god. Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Cobra Event, by Richard Preston