From A Soldier of the Great War
"As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot.
Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love,
to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no
mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours."
From "Because of the Waters of the Flood" in A Dove of the East
"Those are the only marriages that work- where you say to hell with it,
and hurt three or four dozen people, and tell fifty more to go to hell, and then move
out to Nevada or Alaska, or Brazil. If you don't do that, you're not
really married."
From Refiner's Fire
"If you love you make no concessions."
From Winter's Tale
"Every city has its gates, which need not be of stone. Nor need soldiers be upon them or watchers
before them. At first, when cities were jewels in a dark and mysterious world, they tended to be
round and they had protective walls. To enter, one had to pass through gates, the reward for which
was shelter from the overwhelming forests and seas, the merciless and taxing expanse of greens,
whites, and blues - wild and free - that stopped at the city walls.
In time, the ramparts became higher and the gates more massive, until they simply disappeared and
were replaced by barriers, subtler than stone, that girded every city like a crown and held in its
spririt. Some claim that the barriers do not exist, and disparage them. Although they themselves can
penetrate the new walls with no effort, their spirits (which, also, they claim do not exist) cannot, and
are left like orphans around the periphery.
To enter a city intact it is necessary to pass through one of the new gates. They are far more difficult
to find than their solid predecessors, for they are tests, mechanisms, devices, and implementations
of justice."
From "Katherine Comes To Yellow Sky" in A Dove of the East
"She had read all her life about the openness of the West, of its red rivers
and plains leafed in neutral in-breathing gold, of the miraculous Indians and the
Rockies, which were mountains of mist that formed and unformed dreams
so fast as to confuse the youngest of dreamers."
From "Shooting the Bar-1904" in A Dove of the East
"When the President arose that day and glanced at the sky through a window
in the White House, he sent for his favorite artist, and told him to
duplicate the blue of the sky on all the medals, banners and plumes of the army
and the navy. The artist said quite flatly that it was impossible."
From Winter's Tale
"Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of
perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most
seemingly chaotic politcal acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline
structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune,
what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the
occurrence of one astonishingly frigid winter after another. Even electrons,
supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious
little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going
precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that
when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the eind flying through a forest,
and thay do exactly as they are told. Of this, one can be certain.
And yet there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to
arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway
comes rushing down the track from Borough hall, and the snowflake will fall
as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined,
how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is
predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined.
No matter, it happened all at once, in less than an instant, and time
was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and
detailed canvas that we have been given- so we track it, in linear fashion,
piece by piece. Time, however, can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light,
but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe
is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything thatever will be,is- and so on, in
all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion,
and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful.
In the end, or, rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small,
is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to
the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are
redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days have begun and ended
in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is
perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent
not as something that will be, but as something that is.
From Winter's Tale
"Words were all he knew; they possessed and overwhelmed him, as if they were a thousand
white cats with whom he shared a one-bedroom apartment. (In fact, he did not like cats,
because they could not talk and would not listen.)"
From Memoir from Antproof Case
"Without Nestor B. Watoon, the cadets of the Brazilian naval academy would not think
that popcorn is a fruit. They would not have the opportunity of following in the footsteps
of a young lieutenant who, attending an official funeral, approached the official widow, made a
sad bow, and said "Bon appetit." They would not think that the opposite of cool was "worm,"
or that "turban" engines come in several "virgins." "
From A Soldier of the Great War
"Perhaps passing through the gates of death is like passing quietly through
the gate in a pasture fence. On the other side, you keep walking,
without the need to look back. No shock, no drama, just the lifting
of a plank or two in a simple wooden gate in a clearing. Neither
pain, nor floods of light, nor great voices, but just the silent crossing
of a meadow."
From The Veil of Snows
"Perhaps nothing is as strong or fine as unrequited love when by discipline it
is kept properly in its place..."
From Winter's Tale
"To be mad is to feel with excrutiating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not
arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen
will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround it with a thousand distractive
schemes. These schemes, in turn, drive them deeper and deeper into the darkness and
light (which is their mortification and their reward), and confront them with a choice.
They may either slacken and fall back, accepting the relief of a rational view and the
approval of others, or they may push on, and, by falling, arise. When and if by their
unforgivable stubborness they finally burst through to worlds upon worlds of motionless light,
they are no longer called afflicted or insane. They are called saints."
From A Soldier of the Great War
"You live on not by virute of the things you have amassed,
or the work you have done, but through your spirit, in ways
and by means that you can neither control nor foresee."
From Memoir from Antproof Case
"Cadenzas are full and fast and they come not as
a matter of technique but from love, power, and elation. They are a
great declaration. In their unfolding it is as if the pianist is saying
to the composer: "Yes. I understand what you understand. I feel what
you feel. I know you. Your hands are my hands, your eyes my eyes, your
heart my heart." The cadenza Angelica was adding was not to a concerto
but to her life, and she shuddered and wept because, in her resolution,
she had glimpsed the whole of her existence as if through the composer's
eyes."
From Winter's Tale
"The world is a perfect place, so perfect that even if there is nothing
afterward, all of this will have been enough."
From Winter's Tale
"I'd much rather have the man who drives the sleigh than the man who is
driven in it."
From Memoir From Antproof Case
"The human race is intoxicated with narrow victories, for life itself is
a string of them, like pearls that hit the floor when the rope breaks,
and roll away in perfection and anarchy."
From A Soldier of the Great War
[Alessandro and Nicolo have just been spotted by the convoy]
"No matter what they say, don't answer," Allesandro told Nicolo under
his breath, "and don't move."
"Why? What for?" Nicolo protested.
"To enrich their folklore."
One of the women began to wail. Soon it was a chorus. The truck that
had left the line quickly returned, and the farmers drive away, crossing
themselves.
"In a thousand years," Alessandro said, "this incident will be
remembered. By then, of course, we will have become angels, devils, or
a dragon that breathes fire -- but we have given this rock a story that
will be passed on."
"What good is that?"
"It isn't to our advantage, if that's what you mean. However, it's
pleasurable to cast a line into the future, no matter how tenuously.
You never know, the line may be unbroken all the way to the last
judgment.... Nicolo, mischief is important...."
From Winter's Tale
Peter Lake cracked the whip; and they raced to the house on the lakeshore
under a sky of solid delft azure. "Drive hard, Peter Lake, drive hard,"
said Beverly, holding the child.
He had never had a family. But there he was, suddenly, almost a
husband and father. Small scenes can be so beautiful that they change
a man forever. He would never forget that noontime on a lake of ice,
nor would he ever forget her words.
"Drive hard," she had said. He would. Things were different now.
All he wanted now was love.
From A Soldier of the Great War
"If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal."
From "Because of the Waters of the Flood" in A Dove of the East
"She always thought passionately that to think is somehow dispassionate."
From "The Schreuderspitze" in A Dove of the East
"Then in the darkness and purity of the meadows he began to feel that the world had
many secrets, that they were shattering even to glimpse or sense, and
that they were not necessarily unpleasant. In certain states of light
he could see, he could begin to sense, things most miraculous indeed.
Although it seemed self-serving, he concluded nonetheless, after a
lifetime of adhering to the diffuse principles of a science he did not
know, that there was life after death, that the dead rose into a
mischievous world of pure light, that something most mysterious lay
beyond the the enfolding darkness, something wonderful."
From The Veil of Snows
"I learned that houses are delicate frames that hold people only tenuously,
that walls and floors are made of weak pieces weakly stitched together, that
they are broken apart by rain and snow, by gravity, and the movement of earth.
I learned that they go quickly in fire, and that windows shatter in a storm
and doors are broken by enemies and those who are angry. I learned that there
is no safety and no shelter in anything we can build or do, that the safest
and most sheltering place is in the open, in what we call forever."
From Winter's Tale
"You don't have to believe me. It's all right if you don't. The beauty of
truth is that it need not be proclaimed or believed. It skips from soul to
soul, changing form each time it touches, but it is what it is, I have seen
it, and someday you will, too."
From Refiner's Fire
"As he looked into the bow waves he saw the faithful and miraculous
shape of dolphins, speaking to one another in chirps and whistles. They
had great strength and endurance, and yet they were beautiful and not
hard. By observing this he settled a conflict within himself,
determining to be as strong as necessary and yet not to be hard. One of
them veered outward and in so doing made it possible for his eye to
catch Paul Levy's eye, and both seemed to smile without smiling. From
that day forward he knew how to knit together strength and love."
From Winter's Tale
"The horses...were of both the inexplicable mystery that drew him to one thing or
another, and the reality of flesh and blood. He seized upon them for the
very sensible reason that even if their appeal to him was otherworldly,
still, they could be seen pulling junk wagons or transporting tourists
around the park. And it was easy, of course, to love horses, since
they were exceedingly beautiful and exceedingly gentle."
From "Willis Avenue" in A Dove of the East
"When she wiped her brow with her wrist she got ink on her face
anyway, and she was always smiling."
From Winter's Tale
"At first Harry Penn could not see his face. He knelt down, trembling, and
shielded his eyes from the bright light of a lamp in a conical tin shade. And,
then, he saw. He saw what no man has the right to expect to see even in a life
of a hundred years. He saw the past arise. He saw the past victorious. He saw
time and death beaten. He saw Peter Lake. "
From "The Legitimacy of Medium Beauty" in A Dove of the East
"She was Mary from Atlanta, who thought in wide circles about porches and the past and small
towns in the summer."
From "A Dove of the East" in A Dove of the East
"The gentleness of a dove is something we cannot understand. Sometimes a
fighter, it is not all of one color. But most of all it is moved by quiet love
and a wish for simple life among the trees. And when it dies it breaks us
apart, for it never thinks of itself. But God protect it if it should die
alone, and God protect its poor family."
From Winter's Tale
"And then he saw a strange white cloud moving across the now golden face
of the city's cliffs in the sunset. It changed shape and form as it flew
about the towers like a whimsical ghost. He realized what it was - pigeons,
millions of pigeons, in a cloud electrified by reflection. They wheeled
across the skyline like particles of smoke in Brownian motion, caught
brilliantly in a dark chamber by a clear stroke of light reverberating
between a sky and floor of yellow brass. Next to the bodies of the
buildings they were like mites, or snow, or confetti, or dust...and yet they
were one single flight, rising like a plume in the wind. Peter Lake knew
from this that the city would take care, for it was a magical gate through
which those who entered passed in innocent longing, taking every hope,
showing touching courage - and for good reason. The city would take care.
There was no choice but to trust the architect's dream that was spread
before him as compact as an engine, solid and sure, shimmering over the
glinting ice. He lay back, resigned until he saw her again not to know the
color of her eyes.
And then he was suddenly overwhelmed. It was as if a thousand bolts of
lightning had converged to lift him. All he could see was blue, electric
blue, wet shining warm blue, blue with no end, everywhere, blue that glowed
and made him cry out, blue, blue, her eyes were blue."
From A Soldier of the Great War, describing La Tempesta:
"Only in the lightning and in the foreground is the light active. The
woman and the soldier steal the light and color from everything that is
in ruin. Unclothed and unprotected, with her baby in her arms, she
defies the storm unwittingly. Entirely at risk, she shines out. Don't
you understand? She's his only hope. After what he's seen, only she
and the child can put the world in balance. And yet the soldier is
distant, protected, detached. They always say about the soldier that
he's detached. That's true, for he's in the eye of the storm, his heart
has been broken, and he doesn't even know it."
From "The Schreuderspitze" in A Dove of the East
"Sometimes dreams could be so real that they competed with the world,
riding at even balance... when they are so real and so
important, they easily tip the scale and the world buckles and dreams
become real. Crossing the fragile barricades, one enters his dreams,
thinking of his life as imagined."
From Winter's Tale
"It would be vain to imagine we could be favored without effort. Miracles
come to those who risk defeat in seeking them. They come to those who have
exhausted themselves completely in a struggle to accomplish the impossible."
From Winter's Tale
" Justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected. A miracle is nothing more than dormant
justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly
abandoned. Whoever knows this is willing to suffer, for he knows that nothing
is in vain."
From A Soldier of the Great War
"God gives gifts to all creatures," Allessandro continued," no matter what their station or
condition. He may give innocence to a lunatic, or heaven to a thief.
Contrary to most theologians, I have always believed that even worms and weasels
have souls, and that even they are capable of salvation."
From Winter's Tale
'A tranquil city of good laws, fine architecture and clean streets is
like a classroom of obedient dullards, or a field of gelded bulls -
whereas a city of anarchy is a city of promise.'
From A Soldier of the Great War
"Music," the Guitarist continued, with affection, "is the one thing that
tells me time and time again that God exists and that He'll take care. Why
do you think they have it in churches?"
"I know why they have it in churches," Alessandro replied.
"Music isn't rational," the Guitarist said. "It isn't true. What is it?
Why do mechanical variations in rhythm and tone speak the language of the
heart? How can a simple song be so beautiful? Why does it steel my
resolution to believe - even if I can hardly make a living?"