Roses Quotes
"You must believe me. There is a Toliver curse, and it has affected us all."
"Save your energy and mine in trying to convince me to explain, Amos. It's a puzzle, I know, but keep your faith in me. My motives could not be purer."
"I’m feeling sensible, Henry, if that’s what you’re asking."
"I don’t intend to leave her under the Toliver curse."
"Once the umbilical cord is cut to the plantation, the curse will die."
"Rachel will never sell her soul as I have for the sake of family soil."
"They must also represent what you are collectively. You are men of responsibility."
"Papa didn’t mean to hurt you, I know he didn’t."
"You’re distorting the situation, Mary, either to make it easier on your conscience or because you’re so blinded by your obsession for Somerset that you can’t see the real root of your mother’s and brother’s grief."
"I hope to high heaven Miles did not spend good money on one of these."
"Well, we’ll see how you feel when I get back from Europe, after you’ve had the responsibility of overseeing a five-thousand-acre plantation, fighting the boll weevil, caring for a couple of hundred sharecropping families, and keeping your overseer sober."
"Betray you? Most certainly. Let you down, suck you dry… absolutely, but it will never leave you."
"Percy, what are you talking about? What has Miles done? What is he proposing to do?"
"You may be right, but if you are, you’re out of luck."
"Don’t worry, Mary," he’d said, his eyes grave, the twinkle extinguished.
"I’d worry about her beauty going to her head if I didn’t know Mary."
"They were meant for all of you, as I’m sure he knew."
"But it was your letters he kept looking for."
"How could I ever do anything absurdly self-sacrificial out of regard for Percy and you?"
"They were answered, but at the cost of Ollie’s leg."
"I was unable to write what you wanted to read."
"I’m not being maudlin. You know me better than that."
"My lungs are shattered, Mary Lamb, and I don’t know how much time I have left."
"I’m only being frank. What time I have left, I want to spend with Marietta."
"I can’t believe that level head of yours would ever entertain such an idea."
"I must eat more to get some flesh on my bones."
"I must exercise to get color into these cheeks."
"I'm as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rockers."
"Somerset is only soil and seed. I am flesh and blood."
"To separate me from the plantation is to have half of me."
"Somerset is a cotton plantation—Was a cotton plantation."
"You know she’s always tried to push pastels on me, Sassie."
"I have the deed to Fair Acres, and I’m willing to turn it over as collateral right now if we can come to terms."
"Your word. You gave your word right here in this room that you’d never ask me to bail Somerset out if it got into trouble."
"You were right about me, Mary. I need a woman who will love me and our children above all and everyone else."
"It's not the land that's important, but the lessons learned from the land."
"Love ain’t got no business happenin’ to the young. Only the old be wise enough to treat it right."
"You must love them as deeply as ever, Percy, but now as one. That will be your gift to them."
"What you cannot undo, you must accept. And in accepting—especially if they are happy together—you will find the grace to forgive yourself."
"She’ll pine for you, Mister Percy. She grow sick from so much pinin’."
"We’ll have to set about finding him, that’s all."
"By remembering that what you cannot undo, you must accept."
"I can allow it in order to spare him the truth of why we married. Believing I married his best friend on behalf of Somerset will hurt him far less."
"Don’t you think it’s about time you children tied the knot? Any longer and I’ll be too old to be a grandmother."
"It’s not only the loss of the leg, Mary Lamb… There were… other losses as well."
"Resentment against Mary curdled within him as sour as bad milk."
"Since the evening of our last parley, they’d been getting along somewhat."
"Your mother and father will take care of me, but we’ll wait for you in any case."
"Sometimes this happens, and I’m all quivering flesh and raw nerve ends, but it passes."
"Nothing drives a thorn deeper or quicker into the side of friendship than guilt."
"The obvious sequence of events unrolled in his bursting brain like the erratic reel of a silent film."
"He’s more important than any dumb old football game."
"You’ve lost him so completely you’ll never find him again."
"I’d rather stick my pecker into a pig’s snout than slide it into your cunt."
"I’d sell Somerset, every acre of it, I swear."
"Mary discovered she was pregnant after he ran off to Canada."
"I know where you can get another one just like it."
"A man doesn't choose his sons. Things happened the way they did."
"He looks upon all that attention as a result of who you are, not him."
"I'm going to take her, Alice. It's only right. If the girl has the calling, I don't want to keep her from it."
"Memory can be a terrible thing, an instrument of torture that persists in its work long after a man has suffered his time upon the rack."
"The day she’d anticipated for forty years had finally arrived: Mary Toliver DuMont dead and Percy alone, grieving for her."
"It’s plain as a cow patty on the lawn at a garden party."
"I feel so truly sorry, Percy. Please believe me."
"In the end, Gypsy, I suppose the best we can hope for is an armful of white roses."
"I know you think I've betrayed her. I haven't, Amos. I've saved her."
"I begged her to tell me, my dear, but she said… there wasn’t time."
"I’m sure all will come to light soon enough."
"I’m assuming, Amos, that Aunt Mary left the original farm to Rachel?"
"What’s past is past. All I want is for you to shake off the dust of this place forever and come home so we can be a family again."
"I know what a terrible blow this must be to you."
"Her words to me were: ‘I know you think I’ve betrayed her. I haven’t, Amos. I’ve saved her.’"
"Your grandfather had short roots for the land. His passion was for ideologies and people, mainly the less fortunate, and he found them in France."
"For the hands I hope to hold for the rest of my life. Love, Percy."
"Be glad your children will grow up free of Somerset."
"I have never thought of myself as a cowardly man, but I find that I do not have the courage to apprise you of my will’s contents while I am still alive."
"I suspect this is where it all began for you."
"Despite all her losses… she’s still got everything."
"What arrogance, what conceit, to believe I’ve ever known anything about the Tolivers, Warwicks, and DuMonts of Howbutker, Texas."
"The only true judge of a man’s integrity is himself."
"You’re the mirror image of Mary, only less… Intense."
"I have something urgent to discuss with my wife."
"You put a little seedling into the ground and watch it grow."
"I always bet on what I believe is a sure thing."