The October Country Quotes
"Homestead an autumn landscape that won’t stand still, all whispers, shadows, and dousing rains?"
"I came forth wide-eyed, aware of everything I saw and felt."
"All because I had lingered for that extra month and sharpened my senses."
"From that moment on I can recollect my life."
"Once established... I hurled fireballs at the Dark Presence, daring him to try again."
"That country where it is always turning late in the year."
"The carnival magician... touched me with the St. Elmo’s fire sword and shouted sound advice: 'Live forever!'"
"Why should I promise anything so ridiculous? You’ll be fine tomorrow."
"We’ll get the car fixed tomorrow, maybe, at the very latest the next day."
"By God, though, I must admit he’s almost ‘cool.’"
"When situations got out of hand... he panicked, he froze."
"In dark clock-springs of hair, Dog fetched goldenrod, dust of farewell-summer, acorn-husk, hair of squirrel, feather of departed robin, sawdust from fresh-cut cordwood, and leaves like charcoals shaken from a blaze of maple trees."
"You really expect answers to your calling when you are young. You feel that whatever you may think can be real."
"The wave shut me off from the world, from the birds in the sky, the children on the beach, my mother on the shore. There was a moment of green silence. Then the wave gave me back to the sky, the sand, the children yelling."
"Autumn lay in cold ashes. Martin sank deeper, yet deeper in white marble layers of bed, motionless, listening always listening."
"The world was a picture under glass, untouchable. The world was dead."
"The sound of a circling dog which came and went, lifted and faded, opened up, shut in, moved forward, went back, as if the animal were kept by someone on a fantastically long chain."
"He caught her wrists. 'You ain’t gonna tell them?'"
"The odor coming from Dog was different."
"It was a smell of strange earth. It was a smell of night within night, the smell of digging down deep in shadow through earth that had lain cheek by jowl with things that were long hidden and decayed."
"Dog was a bad dog, digging where he shouldn’t. Dog was a good dog, always making friends. Dog loved people. Dog brought them home."
"Are you positive this is the right tenement?"
"Them lambchops look sickly! What’s the price on brains?"
"Such an odd business," said Shaw. "If people knew they’d think us Peeping Toms, doddering old fools. Lord, I feel self-conscious standing here."
"Behind her, several heads peered from apartment windows above, summoned by her crashing of the door."
"I want a good cut of meat. Let’s see what you got hidden to take home for yourself!"
"But right at ninety-two degrees lies the apex of irritability, everything is itches and hair and sweat and cooked pork."
"Let me do all the talking if—hold on! There she is!"
"Who are you, dirty old grandmas, coming here, spying, you old cranks!" she yelled.
"Just when the idea occurred to her that she was being murdered she could not tell."
"Try and kill me, she screamed. Try, try, but I won’t die! I won’t!"
"She was free. She was whispering, rapidly, endlessly."
"He heard the bedroom door sway open a few inches."
"She crushed his hand in hers, a supernatural whiteness in her face."
"His hand froze, startled. His breath went in. His heart held one or two beats."
"Your wife doesn’t like her child, Dave."
"It’s been a hard thing for her. She’ll need a lot of love this next year."
"Does a baby know the difference between right and wrong?" she asked.
"She sighed as he clicked off the light again, and suddenly she slept."
"She’s dead," said Dave, blindly. Starting for the door.
"He twisted the key in the door. The knob turned under his fingers, oiled, silent."
"Alice lay in a broken, grotesque, pallid gesturing and angling of her thin body, at the bottom of the stairs, like a crumpled doll that doesn’t want to play any more, ever."
"He could only look, and not move, and look again at Alice."
"He held her body. But she wouldn’t live. She wouldn’t even try to live."
"I’m going to have him christened next Sunday. Know what name I’m giving him? I’m going to call him Lucifer."
David Leiber dangled his watch over the crib. "See, baby? Something bright. Something pretty. Sure. Sure. Something bright. Something pretty."
"The baby lies there and thinks of ways to kill me."
"The lights went out again. She trembled against him."
"She was through. She collapsed inward on herself and finally slept."
"It was the baby again." She clutched his hand. "I try to lie to myself and say that I’m a fool."
"He heard a strange little sound of awareness and awakeness in the room."
"He smelled the warm woman-smell of her next to him."
"The thing he held in his hand was a toy."
"He remembered seeing the baby, feeling the baby, awake in the dark."
"She’s dead," he said, blindly. Starting for the door.
"Wait till you see how magical! Shut the door!"
"It was a sweet long time in the deep grass of the garden where they idled most deliciously."
"Crackle, crackle—the birthday burnt away to cellophane nothingness."
"What about the Beasts, the Monsters? And being mashed and God killed?"
"Bright crystal and clear wine on the parquet flooring, that’s all you’d see at dawn."
"Down through the deeps of the Worlds, a soft mist floated."
"He stood near her, holding the incredible glove, for a long time."
"He reached the great rusted, screaming iron gate, leapt through; the Universe dwindled behind, he did not look back at his old Worlds."
"He kept yelling, ‘I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m glad I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, it’s good to be dead!’"
"He wasn’t hungry for lunch. He kept looking at the wheat and the wind bending and tipping and ruffling it."
"He strode into the bedroom, took the scythe down off its wall-pegs. He felt cool."
"Right there, before him. Another sweep of the scythe and he’d cut them away."
"Molly thought it awfully strange when he came home early and kissed her on the cheek, for no reason at all."
"Drew Erickson moves on with his scythe, with the light of blind suns and a look of white fire in his never-sleeping eyes, on and on and on."
"Uncle Einar’s beautiful silk-like wings hung like sea-green sails behind him."
"It was instinct. Illogical as lightning striking and not hurting."
"The field grows crooked, wild, like a crazy thing."
"There’s enough. It comes in the window and blows the curtains a little bit. Just enough to tell me."
"It’s a damned long distance. I wouldn’t dare, but thanks, anyway."
"It wants what’s inside me. My mind, my brain. It wants my life-power, my psychic force, my ego."
"You just set there until my little Emily trounces home from college this afternoon!"
"You heard what I said! I f you got a mind to talk to me, well, you can talk."
"Why, it’s silly people live a couple years and are shoved like wet seeds in a hole; but nothin’ sprouts."
"I’m startin’ my own philosophy here and now! Why, it’s silly people live a couple years and are shoved like wet seeds in a hole; but nothin’ sprouts."
"But why, I’m no spook! You known me most of your life! Now’s no time to snivel-sop. Fetch up on your heels or I’ll slap you crack across your nose!"
"I’ll take my word, from this night on I’ll never put pen to paper."
"I had seen too many writers up, down, and out, hurt, unhappy, suicidal."
"He helped me decide, unwittingly, what I might not have had the courage to decide myself, to bow gracefully out while the cotillion was still on, while the Chinese lanterns still cast flattering pink lights on my Harvard complexion."
"How much better to cut your own caboose off the train, before others do it for you."
"God, how I love your work and God, how I hate you because you write so well."
"I was so grateful that standing on the beach hip-deep in water that night, I cried. I was grateful. Do you really understand that word? Grateful he had let me live when he had had it in his hand to annihilate me forever."
"I cried out in rebellion. ‘John, old man!’ ‘Dudley, old pal!’ while John Oatis went out on a dark siding behind a tin baling-shed at midnight and my engine, with all the flag-wavers and brass bands, boiled on toward dawn."
"No one in the world knows how to hate like a writer does."