INGENIVM NOBIS IPSA PVELLA FECIT, Part I (1975)

"But her glance was nutritious; the spot became, if anything, more pronounced as the years passed."

Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

"Oh, what, sorry, I forgot the bags are alphabetized."

("What?")

"Every other week you pull everything out of this cabinet, spread it out on the kitchen floor, then crawl around in it like an archeologist."

TB

Sweetie (1989)

"I arrive with fifty records, three sticks of incense, and at least ten plans."

Sweetie (1989)

"And the bodies spoke to me. I saw stories in flesh, the untold tales of dead arms just hanging there, of pelvises locked in 'Park,' of clenched fists and locked jaws, in physiques molded into attitudes of 'I'm not good enough' or 'Get out of my way.' Chests sunken in shame, shoulders riding high, voices edgy with anger or constricted with fear. The body never lies. 

Who could believe that the secret lay in movement? In making a home of this flesh we cart around like a burden?'

Maps to Ecstasy, Gabrielle Roth

"A moment's hush runs like a fuse through the wet sky."

Not Quite Human 2 (1989)

"'When I was a kid,' she began after a pause, 'I found a rope doll, an Indian doll. I liked it better than all my other dolls for a while, because I could pretend it was anything I longed for it to be.'"

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

"Our egos are menageries of dull, predictable soap opera characters we learn to play. They keep us from being who we are, knowing how to live and what to do, by sapping our creative power and sabotaging the authentic expressions of human energy..."

Maps to Ecstasy, Gabrielle Roth

"...I wan tu aul I wan tu nuthing."

Trust (1990)

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

Your Brother and You

"But fellers, I pleaded into the whorled ear of rain, fair's fair, now, isn't it? Fair's fair? 

Yet, even in the face of that time-revered truth, the phantoms hung back; fair might be fair and all, they couldn't argue with that, but when it came to first baseman--or second or third--they wanted a cool head and a brave heart, not some dang punk who throws his fist up in front of his specs every time he sees a fast one skipping in his general direction. 

But guys... 

Not some dang sissy who falters, fidgets, and finally faints dead away and wakes up five minutes later with his trousers around his ankles and an ammonia capsule under his nose--just because a nurse pricked him from behind with a little penicillin. 

Wait, fellers; it wasn't just a prick. The needle was this long! 

This long, the sissy says. This long. Willa listen at him.  

It was so! Please, fellers ...maybe home base? 

Home base. Willa just listen at the pantywaist.... C'mon; let's get at it..." 

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

"And I fled to my room to recuperate."

"Nothing there. Nothing but dreams and delusion. They all were driven by the need for something else. But when the drive was over, and the dreaming and deluding worn out, they all ended up with the same dull old scene."

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

"'So you came?' I asked, feeling my disappointment turn to a covert elation... And your jealousy has given me strength to make the moon wait another month. 'In Viv's place?'"

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

"THIS IS A VITAL ELEMENT."

Bull Durham (1988)

The Crush (1993)

can you see my wild native blood?

Sweetie (1989)

"When I was young and walked this way--somber, sallow, and morose as a mudball--when I was six and eight and ten and thought my life doled out to me in mean, cheap distances... when I was a boy and should have sprinted barefoot in bib overalls along these ways where quails piped and field mice hid... 'why was I kept in Buster Brown oxfords and corduroy slacks and a room full of big-little books?'... 

... 'Why was I spun into an upstairs cocoon? This is a land for childhood frolic, with forests dark and magical... why, then, did I refuse it as my world-to-grow-up-in?' 

The question had a new and fearful ring to me. Always before, whenever I brooded in some moody apartment with some melancholy wine and let my mind wander back to stand gaping, perplexed and horrified, on the brink of my past, I was able to fix the blame on some convenient villain: 'It was my brother Hank; it was my ancient fossil of a father, who frightened and disgusted me; it was my mother, whose name be frailty... they were the ones who tore my young life asunder!'... 

... But that doubting moon wouldn't let me get away with it. 'Be fair, be fair... Can you blame the first ten years on the eleventh?'"

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

keep it in, keep it out

"... Kesey stopped writing novels for more than twenty years. Decades later he offered this bit of advice to writers: 

'... And God will tell you to come to him and sing his praises. And he will promise that if you do, all the muses that ever visited Shakespeare will fly in your ear and out your mouth like golden pennies. It's the job of the writer in America to say, "Fuck you, God, fuck you and the Old Testament you rode in on, fuck you." The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful. Anytime anybody says come to me and says, "Write my advertisement, be my ad manager," tell him "Fuck you." The job is always to be exposing God as the crook, as the sleaze ball.'"

"Introduction," Charles Bowden (Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey)