Give me deeper darkness. Money is not made in the light.
—George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House, 1919
because I like rodeos more than I like golf,
because there’s something about the sound of mealworms and
leeches and the dream of a double-wide
that reminds me this is America, because of the simple pleasure
of a last chance …
because even you with your superior aesthetic cried
when Tammy Wynette died,
because my people
come from dirt.
—Barbara Ras, “A Wife Explains Why She Likes Country,” One Hidden Stuff, 2006
Lovely snipe and tender turn, excellent vapor and slender butter, all the splinter and the trunk, all the poisonous darkening drunk, all the joy in weak success, all the joyful tenderness, all the section and the tea, all the stouter symmetry.
—Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons, 1914
Cox eagerly informed me that not only do fish make sounds, in some places they chorus, like a forest at dawn or dusk. “People say that fish sing like birds,” he told me. But strictly speaking, fish evolved millions of years before terrestrial animals, including birds. “Birds,” Cox stated, “sing like fish.”
—Amorina Kingdon, Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water, 2024
And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, ‘Dan’l Webster—Dan’l Webster!’ the ground’ll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake. And after a while you’ll hear a deep voice saying, ‘Neighbour, how stands the Union?’
Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock-bottomed and copper sheathed, one and indivisible, or he’s liable to rear right out of the ground. At least, that’s what I was told when I was a youngster.
—Stephen Vincent Benét, “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” 1936
An adventure is merely a bit of bad planning, brought to light by the test of trial.
—Roald Amundsen, My Life as an Explorer, 1927
There was no winter in’t: as autumn it was
That grew the more by reaping. His delights
Were dolphin-like …
—William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, Scene 2
What in their backgrounds could give them that huge ambition, that kind of motor, that will and discipline, that faith in themselves? What kind of faith would cause, say, a dozen of these habitual winners to bend their lives and the lives of those dear to them to one hugely public roll of the dice in which all but one would fail?
—Richard Ben Cramer, What It Takes: The Way to the White House, 1992
My daughter’s garden has a goldfish pool
With six fish, each a little finger long.
I stand and watch them following their rule
Of never touching, never going wrong.
Trajectories as perfect as plain song …
Now I am weak. The sky is overcast
Here in the English autumn, but my mind
Basks in the light I never left behind.
—Clive James, “Sentenced to Life,” Times Literary Supplement, May 2, 2014
A nap ending precisely at sunset, with its undead overtones, was rarely a good idea.
—Jonathan Lethem, A Gambler’s Anatomy, 2016
Sooner or later the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.
—V. S. Pritchett, “Gibbon and the Home Guard,” 1941
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me,
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall,
Confident that we have built our wall.
—Seamus Heaney, “Scaffolding,” Death of a Naturalist, 1966
Melons, peaches, most sort of plums, and all sorts of grapes in England, I think children should be wholly kept from, as having a very tempting taste, in a very unwholesome juice; so that, if it were possible, they should never so much as see them, or know there were any such thing. … Apples and pears, too, which are thorough ripe, and have been gathered some time, I think may be safely eaten at any time, and in pretty large quantities; especially apples, which never did any body hurt, that I have heard, after October.
—John Locke, “Some Thoughts Concerning Education,” 1693
My neighbor looks like my mother
who left a long time ago
and did not hear any of this.
Just for a minute, give her back to me,
before she died, kneeling
in the dirt under the sun, calling me darling
in Arabic, which no one has since.
—Hayan Charara, “Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms,” Poets.org, 2015
I am candid and sincere in telling you that I fear if we yield to passion, and without sufficient cause shall take that step, that instead of becoming greater or more peaceful, prosperous and happy—instead of becoming Gods, we will become demons, and at no distant day commence cutting one another’s throats.
—Alexander Hamilton Stephens, address to the Georgia Legislature against secession, November 14, 1860
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing …
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind,” 1820
Only the music got away clean.
—Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music, 1975
