They said old Windpeter stood up on the seat of his wagon, raving and swearing at the onrushing locomotive, and that he fairly screamed with delight when the team, maddened by his incessant slashing at them, rushed straight ahead to certain death. The boys had a secret conviction that he knew what he was doing and they admired his foolish courage. Most boys have seasons of wishing they would die gloriously instead of just being grocery clerks and going on with their humdrum lives.
"All women," according to Wash Williams
I tell you there is something rotten about them. I was married, sure. My wife was dead before she married me, she was a foul thing come out a woman more foul. She was a thing sent to make life unbearable to me. It is a trick of Nature. They are creeping, crawling, squirming things.
My character has many strange turns. Why I want to talk to you of the matter I don't know. I might keep still and get more credit in your eyes. I have a desire to make you admire me, that's a fact. I don't know why. That's why I talk.
Jesse the fanatic
He made everyone on the farm work as they had never worked before and yet there was no joy in the work. If things went well they went well for Jesse and never for the people who were his dependents.
The materialistic age
...When wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God, when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beauty would be forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions. The greedy thing in him wanted to make money faster than it could be made.
Her mind began to play with thoughts of making friends with John Hardy. When he came into the room with the wood in his arms, she pretended to be busy with her studies but watched him eagerly. When he put the wood in the box and turned to go out, she put down her head and blushed. She tried to make talk but could say nothing, and after he had gone she was angry at herself for her stupidity.
It seemed to her that between herself and all the other people in the world, a wall had been built up and that she was living just on the edge of some warm inner circle of life that must be quite open and understandable to others. She became obsessed with the thought that it wanted but a courageous act on her part to make all of her association with people something quite different, and that it was possible by such an act to pass into a new life as one opens a door and goes into a room.
Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night. You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life.
A noble motive confused with a compulsion?
Like most young girls, she thought marriage would change the face of life. Young wives with whom she had talked spoke softly and shyly. "It changes things to have a man of your own," they said. Later she admitted, "It wasn't Tom I wanted, it was marriage."
Thoughts came and I wanted to get away from my thoughts. I began to beat the horse. I wanted to go at a terrible speed, to drive on and on forever. I wanted to get out of town, out of my marriage, out of my body, out of everything. I almost killed the horse, making him run, and when he could not run any more I got out of the buggy and ran afoot into the darkness. I wanted to run away from everything but I wanted to run towards something too.
Go Back