Blue Highways Quotes
"Beware thoughts that come in the night. They aren’t turned properly; they come in askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of sources."
"A man who couldn’t make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance."
"Following a circle would give a purpose—to come around again—where taking a straight line would not."
"To set out on a long (equivalent to half the circumference of the earth), circular trip over the back roads of the United States."
"I crossed the Mississippi as it carried its forty hourly tons of topsoil to the Louisiana delta."
"Into those places where you say, ‘My god! What if you lived here!’ The Middle of Nowhere."
"Each of the people from anywhere, when you see in them far enough, you find red blood and a red heart. There’s a hope."
"For me, I heard the past snuffling about somewhere close."
"To walk Main Street in Shelbyville, Kentucky, is to go down three centuries of American architecture: rough-hewn timber, postbellum brick, Victorian fretwork, 1950s plate glass."
"The road took me to places where the only fast food is a prairie dog."
"We ran through a lot of sneakers—sneakers and liniment."
"Life doesn’t happen along interstates. It’s against the law."
"A boat is a hole in the water surrounded by wood into which one pours money."
"Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive."
"You had unrenovated history. Frankfort or Frank’s Ford, take your pick."
"This boy wouldn’t sleep up here mongst the whangdoodles withouten his peace of mind." - Gives a sense of someone's determination to maintain their sense of security and comfort, despite challenging circumstances.
"You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you’ve been feeling bad." - A reflection on the deep appreciation and relief one feels when emerging from a period of hardship or illness.
"Hard weather makes good timber." - A metaphor for the idea that difficult experiences or conditions often produce strong, resilient characters.
"Give me the quiet lurk of whangdoodles any night." - Expresses a preference for the mysterious or unknown challenges over predictable, mundane ones.
"From the living and dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me." - A poetic way of saying that the marks and signs left by people, both living and deceased, on the environment are felt and welcomed by the speaker.
"That’s why your Harry Truman was good timber. Toughern oak." - A commendation of Harry Truman's character, likening his resilience and strength to the sturdiness of oak.
"My advice is to live your life." - A simple yet profound advice emphasizing the importance of living one's life fully and authentically.
"Out on Roanoke, you can feel the beginning." - Refers to the historical significance of Roanoke, suggesting a tangible connection to the past and the origins of American history that can be felt there.
"They make a man right peaceful." - Suggests that certain practices or beliefs can bring a deep sense of peace to an individual.
"The diner, the real diner of olden times, is dying out, you know." - Nostalgically reflects on the changing times and the loss of traditional establishments like old diners.
"Most, day nebba make it to da bottom what da big fish eatem." - A reflection on the harsh realities of nature and survival, possibly metaphorical for broader life challenges.
"Remember the land and visit Fort Raleigh. Thomas Harriot is the greatest unknown Elizabethan." - A recommendation to acknowledge the importance of historical places and figures, suggesting that much can be learned from them.
"The Manitowocs planted crops and made fish traps for the colonists and Indian women washed English stockings." - Highlights the cooperative and helpful nature of the Manitowoc Indians towards the early colonists, indicating a history of collaboration and mutual assistance.
"It’s always been a rough place. Land pirates, sea pirates. Blackbeard was killed down at Ocracoke where my family comes from." - Speaks to the turbulent and adventurous history of a particular region, filled with stories of pirates and legendary figures.
"They make a man right peaceful." - Implies that certain experiences or places have the power to bring a profound sense of peace and contentment to an individual.
"No, you don’t. You’re goggling the coeds in their cute tans." - A humorous observation about being distracted by the superficial or attractive aspects of one's surroundings, perhaps at the expense of deeper understanding or engagement.
"I’m gonna be sick from how much I’ve ate." - A humorous, exaggerated statement about overindulgence, common in discussions about feasting or eating to excess.
"Coming here is following a call to be quiet." - Reflects a spiritual or personal journey towards finding peace, quiet, and perhaps a deeper sense of self or connection with the divine.
"West of the bouldery Coosa River, I saw an old man plowing an old field with an old horse, and once more I wasn’t sure whether I was seeing the end or beginning."
"Water Avenue intersected Broad Street and ran parallel to the river on the high, north side."
"I looked along Broad Street for a beer to chase the heat and furnish opportunity for conversation."
"Cain’t advertise bars or liquor in the city. About the most you can get away with is ‘cold beverages of all kinds.’"
"I’ll tell you about change." It came out like a threat. "Change ruined this town."
"Do blacks come in here now?" "Here? They got their clubs, we got ours."
"I’m tellin’ you sickin’ dogs and poundin’ the niggers was a lack of ignorance. We shoulda paid no mind."
"My kites day fly for time in da air, not how high. Someday I want people to be rememberin’ Duhon."
"I’ll promise them one thing: ain’t gonna be no more gentle darkies croonin’ down on the levee."
"I’d rather see a person shut up about his prejudices."
"Can’t live off a toot and a whistle unless you can eat steam. Hell, it ain’t even steam anymor"
"When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road."
"In light of what was about to happen, my guilt over easy transit proved ironic."
"The best moments of any day on the road was, toward sunset, looking forward to the last stop."
"Be careful going in search of adventure—it’s ridiculously easy to find."
"The whole night I slept and woke, slept and woke, while the hail fell like iron shot, and thunder slammed around, and lightning seared the ice."
"I understood why, the day before, I’d thought there could be no road over the Chiricahuas: there wasn’t."
"To me, being Indian means being responsible to my people. Helping with the best tools."
"The desert gives space then closes it up with heat."
"Caring breaks before the man if he can only wait it out."
"Maybe experience is like a globe—you can’t go the wrong way if you travel far enough."
"We don’t think of it as a reservation since we were never ordered there. We found it through Hopi prophecies."
"I know an Osage who says, ‘Don’t Americanize me and I won’t Americanize you.’"
"But for a lot of Hopis, the worst thing to call a man is kahopi, ‘not Hopi.’"
"Most Hopis follow our religion, at least in some ways, because it reminds us who we are and it’s part of the land."
"A Hopi learns that he belongs to two families, his natural clan and that of all things."
"If you respect yourself, you respect all things."
"The only reason I’m sticking around now is to see WHAT THE HELL IS NEXT."
"A man’s work is doing what he’s supposed to do, and that’s why he needs a catastrophe now and again to show him a bad turn isn’t the end."
"A man’s true work is to get his boots on each morning. Curiosity gets it done about as well as anything else."
"Any man’s true work is to get his boots on each morning. Curiosity gets it done about as well as anything else."
"I’ve been bawled out, bawled up, held up, held down, hung up, bulldozed, blackjacked, walked on, cheated, squeezed and mooched..."
"The story of the vial spread among the natives, and years later when smallpox did break out, Indians began massacring pioneers in an effort to eradicate little black bottles."
"By dint of copious ablutions, she was freed from all adventitious tint and fragrance, and entered into the nuptial state, the cleanest princess that had ever been known, of the somewhat unctuous tribe of the Chinooks."
"Hood is the most notable American mountain named after an enemy military leader."
"To live so uninformed before such grandeur is the hallmark of a true native son."
"BUT for the flip of a coin, Portland, Oregon, would be Boston, Oregon."
"If you wanted a private table, you waited in line on Ankeny Street; or, if you would take one of the long, ship’s mess tables, you could be seated immediately."
"Since Salt Creek, I’d been working to keep the loneliness down."
"In our time, who of the many astronauts has written anything to compare in significance or force of language?"
"The past is for the present, the present for the future."
"Then the future came wearing shoes cut out of cows and pants woven on a machine."
"I put my mug away as the unsexed Hereford steers chewed blankly in the grasses where once buffalo bulls, shaggy pizzles almost touching the ground, red eyes glaring over their females, had roamed."
"The road shook and pounded me, the seat slammed my spine, the steering wheel rattled my knuckles."
"The sky had been cloudy all day, and now I’d just heard a discouraging word."
"Amidst the crackles, a revivalist was at work on a sermon shot through with real thunderbolts."
"Thou knowest, O Lord, we shall pass this way but once."
"Darkness came early. At Wolf Point, a lightning storm struck the benchland, rain dropped in noisy assaults."
"The prairie storm, pouring cold water on the little cafe glowing in the blackness, held us all."
"A police light twisted, turning raindrops crimson, and a man’s still face pressed against the window."
"One November in another century, before Wolf Point had a name, the citizens complained of wolves."
"She’s a nuke," the father said with proprietary pride."
In the park, a man walking with a child saw me staring at a "retired" Spartan missile.
"Mile after mile, the small ground squirrels stood at attention along the highway."
"The country gave up the glacial hills and flattened to perfection."
"No place, in theory, is boring of itself. Boredom lies only with the traveler’s limited perception."
"As daylight went, the men, racing rain and the short growing season, switched on headlights to keep the International Harvesters moving."
"At last the horizon ruptured at the long hump of Turtle Mountain, obscurely scrubby against the sky."
"In a hotel room at the geographical center of North America, a neon sign blinking red through the cold curtains, I lay quietly like a small idea in a vacant mind."
"EAST of Rolla. After breakfast in the city park at Langdon, a Nordic town of swept streets and tidy pastel houses."
"This is a baseball game, not a NASA shot."
"WERE it not for a web-footed rodent and a haberdashery fad in eighteenth-century Europe, Minnesota might be a Canadian province today."
"The lake was Itasca and the stream, a twelve-inch-deep rush of cold clarity over humps of boulders, was the Mississippi River."
"A great blue heron somehow got its bulk airborne without snaring immense wings and long dangling legs in the close mesh of branches."
"Onward across the appallingly featureless yonder of North Dakota where towns, like the poor verse of Burma-Shave signs, came and went quickly."
"I needed a hot shower. In Rolla, on the edge of the Turtle Mountain reservation, I stopped at an old house rebuilt into a small hotel."
I never worried about making a living," he said, "but I’ve done thinking about making a life.