I. (where are your teeth now?) "... making it more than what it is lessens it."

"And I never understood why until that afternoon in Wakonda at the union meeting, sitting there remembering how I'd lost my bobcats, looking out the window of the grange hall at the spot where my boat had sunk in the bay, and hearing Floyd Evenwrite say to old man Syverson: 'All it wants is its fair advantage.'

So as close as I can come to explaining it, friends and neighbors, that is why that river is no buddy of mine. It's maybe the buddy of the brant geese and the steelhead. It is mighty likely a buddy of old lady Pringle and her Pioneer Club in Wakonda -- they hold oldtime get-togethers on the docks every Fourth of July in honor of the first time some old moccasined hobo come paddling across in his dugout a hundred years ago, the Highway of Pioneers they call it... and who the hell knows, maybe it was, just like now it is the railroad we used to float our log booms down -- but it still is no personal friend of mine. Not just the thing about the bobcats; I could tell you a hundred stories, probably, give you a hundred reasons showing why I got to fight that river. Oh, fine reasons; because you can spend a good deal of time thinking during those thinking times, when you're taking timber cruises walking all day long with nothing to do but check the pedometer on your foot, or sitting for hours in a stand blowing a game call, or milking in the morning when Viv is laid up with cramps -- a lot of time, and I got a lot of things about myself straight in my mind: I know, for an instance, that, if you want to play this way, you can make the river stand for all sorts of other things. But doing that it seems to me is taking your eye off the ball; making it more than what it is lessens it. Just to see it clear is plenty. Just to feel it cold against you or watch it flood or smell it when the damn thing backs up from Wakonda with all the town's garbage and sewage and dead crud floating around in it stinking up a breeze, that is plenty. And the best way to see it is not looking behind it -- or beneath it or beyond it -- but dead at it.


And to remember that all it wants is its fair advantage."

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

II. (digging t-th'ina)

"So by keeping my eye on the ball I found it just came down to this: that that river was after somethings I figured belonged to me. It'd already got some and was all the time working to get some more. And in as how I was well known as one of the Ten Toughest Hombres this side of the Rockies, I aimed to do my best to hinder it. 

And as far as I was concerned, hindering something meant -- had always meant -- going after it with everything you got, fighting and kicking, stomping and gouging, and cussing it when everything else went sour. And being just as strong in the hassle as you got it in you to be. Now that's real logical, don't you think? that's real simple. If You Wants to Win, You Does Your Best. Why, a body could paint that on a plaque and hang it up over his bedstead. He could live by it. It could be like one of the Ten Commandments for success. 'If You Wants to Win You Does Your Best.' Solid and certain as a rock; one rule I was gut-sure I could bank on. 

Yet it took nothing more than my kid brother coming to spend a month with us to show me that there are other ways of winning -- like winning by giving in, by being soft, by not gritting your goddamn teeth and getting your best hold... winning by not, for damned sure, being one of the Ten Toughest Hombres west of the Rockies. And show me as well that there's times when the only way you can win is by being weak, by losing, by doing your worst instead of your best. 

And learning that come near to doing me in."

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

"...and, with this just-for-fun contest, begins springing on herself an old, old trap."

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

"lying to herself with the truth: 'No one can see me.'"

"'Who knows who he snatched it from,' the seamstress thought. 'To think I had to eat what a thieving wind brought me!'"

The Seamstress and the Wind, César Aira

arrigato gozaiwash ..tu, fella.

It's Pat (1994)

1991-1992?

In dad's old pickup,
saddle blanket seat covers
wore elbows and thighs.

"The worst of being in prison, he thought, is not being able to lock one's door."

"Julien felt himself hardly worthy of so much devotion -- in truth he was weary of heroics. He would have found a simple, naive, even a timid tenderness affecting, whereas, on the contrary, the notion of an audience, of the presence of others, was always a requisite to Mathilde's haughty soul."

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

permanent change, active reading

"Little by little, self-command returned. He compared himself to a general who has just half won a great battle. The advantage is assured, he said to himself -- and is immense; but what will happen tomorrow? all could be lost in an instant. 

With a passionate gesture he opened the Memoirs Dictated at St. Helena by Napoleon, and forced himself to read them for two long hours; his eyes alone were doing the reading -- but that did not signify; he compelled himself to go on. During this strange exercise, his heart and mind, soaring to the highest possible plane, worked on unconsciously. This is a heart altogether different from that of Mme de Rênal, he was saying to himself -- but got no further. 

'Make her afraid,' he cried suddenly, flinging the book away. The enemy will obey me only so far as I frighten him, that's when he daren't despise me."

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

26 Bathrooms (1985)

"Ah well, it's all over, she said to herself with apparent calm; what remains is a great lesson for me; it was a terrible blunder, humiliating! It will teach me wisdom for the rest of my life."

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

The Blues Brothers (1980)

"1ce the Powers luce itwl fetch itwl move itwl happen every 1 whats in its road. Some 1s got to happen it. If it aint me or you cud wel be some 1 wersen us cudnt it. So I wer on for letting it happen."

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

The Blues Brothers (1980)

"...If you cud even jus see 1 thing clear the woal of whats in it you cud see every thing clear. But you never wil get to see the woal of any thing youre all ways in the middl of it living it or moving thru it. Never mynd."

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

"Every thing emtyd out of the worl and out of me."

Addams Family Values (1993)

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

"... my nemminy there nemminy."

"I wunnert how I ever cudve fealt real up to then. How I ever cudve fealt a live before I begun to take things in like I wer now. I wantit to move I wantit to happen with what ever were happening roun me." 

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

8 uv penkuls

"Woan yu pleas tel me how menne Chaynjis thayr ar? The Littl Man sed, As menne as reqwyrd. Eusa sed, Reqwyrd by wut? The Little Man sed, Reqwyrd by the idea uv yu. Eusa sed, Wut is the idear uv me? The Little Man sed, That we doan no til yuv gon thru aul yur Chaynjis."

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

"'You bes start putting things to gether for your self you aint a kid no mor.'"

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

"You've declared your contempt for the world-- go get 'em, sport!"

Crow. T. Robot, MST3K, "Parts: The Clonus Horror" (Season 8, Ep. 11)

the happy few

600 pages!
one-quarter unread, dissolved
in the spin cycle.

Laundered, Stendhal's pulp
washed into 5-dozen pairs
of white cotton briefs.

Fibers in fibers:
what falls off is a flurry
swept off hardwood floors.

The Element of a Crime (1984)

Soapdish (1991)

"You want to know what's crazy: people waiting for one big sign to push them into doing something they ought to be doing in the first place. ...What were we waiting for? We could have been better people all on our own. But whatever. If you want to wait for a magic sign to be happy, then good luck to you, lady. I'm walking out now to help my possibly-dying brother. You can shoot me in the back of the head if you want."

Earl Hickey, "Made a Lady Think I was God," My Name is Earl (2006)

27. First Experience of Life (Barfly, 1987)

"...the first check inflicted on the dream that had been sweeping Julien away."

"'My God! To be happy, to be loved, is that all there is to it?' Such was Julien's first thought when he got back to his room. He was in that state of amazement and deep uneasiness into which a soul descends when it gets what it has desired for a long time. Such a soul, in the habit of desiring, now finds no more desire but has as yet no memories. Like a soldier coming off parade, Julien was studiously occupied in reviewing all the details of his conduct. 

'Did I let myself down in any way? Have I played may part well?' 

What part? That of a man who is accustomed to shine in front of women."

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

"September morn' dips a dainty toe into a Broadway billboard, and unshivering-gazes down upon a street that only yesterday was choked with summer. 

But the refuse is there, where the summer has passed and left pieces of itself: in the scratch and warp of summertime blues still screeching out of the loud speakers; the sunny mannequins, wax slightly melted, waiting in shop windows to be replaced by the fall and winter models; the faint odors of the sun-warmed perfume, th' souvenir of the golden girl who walked right past you, turned the corner, vanished into a place where summer never dies.  

A place not open to you, kid. Only autumns ahead of you, kid. Start using it; it's already given you two murders: a woman in the front seat of a car, a man scooped out of the earth from the teeth of a steam shovel. What more can you ask? September's showering her gifts on you, kid, take them! they're all yours!"

Detective Danny Clover, "The Anna Compton Murder Case," Broadway is My Beat (1951)

"Like Hercules he found himself placed, not between vice and virtue, but between the mediocrity consequent on assured well-being and all the heroic dreams of his youth. So I lack true resolution, he said to himself. This was the suspicion which gave him most pain. I'm not the wood out of which great men are fashioned, since I'm afraid that eight years spent earning my bread will rob me of the sublime energy required to do extraordinary things."

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

"'My friend,' he advised once more, 'became a good independent country dweller, worthy and educated, rather than a priest without a vocation.'"

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

("For he was not a quixote, was he? A quixote imitated great models. What models did he imitate?")

Belly of an Architect (1987)

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"...Moses, in his slightly dazed but intense way, unable to restrain associations, wondered whether she still gave off those odors of feminine secretions..."

Herzog, Saul Bellows

Belly of an Architect (1987)

"Whatever had come over him during these last months, the spell, really seemed to passing, really going. ... At this time he had no messages for anyone. Nothing. Not a single word."

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"'Oh, Lord, let no bad man come unto my chubbiness.'"

Rocky II (1979)

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"And anyway he was growing tired of his obsession."

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

Herzog, Saul Bellows