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121 " Rich people are another species. Sort of lost in their own way. It’s a good thing they have country clubs and shit because it keeps them kinda corralled up in one place. "
― Peter Heller , The River
122 " He was aggregating memory like a wall against extinction and the little boxes of slides were his bricks. "
― Peter Heller , The Dog Stars
123 " Dusk was moving over the water with a stillness that turned half the world to glass. The wall of mountains had gone to shadow as had the reflections at their feet. In the stillness the rings of rising trout appeared like raindrops. Slowly, in silence, the dark water tilted away from the remaining daylight. "
― Peter Heller , Celine
124 " I mean it felt my heart might just burst. Bursting is different than breaking. Like there is no way to contain how beautiful. "
125 " our job as citizens, apparently, is the pursuit of happiness. Something I always have to gird myself for. I’d much rather just be happy, or not. "
126 " It didn't get better, not in my book. I mean if you weren't looking too hard at what just happened or who might be down the road or at some other stuff. Maybe living well is the art of not looking at that, at the other stuff, when you don't have to. Or being okay with it. "
― Peter Heller , The Painter
127 " A fire was good company. "
― Peter Heller , The Guide
128 " there was nothing really more important other than treating animals and people with decency and respect— "
129 " God, the names. You could almost walk into the words themselves.” Now Jack put down his cup. He’d never heard anyone say that and it was true. For a moment he lost the blithe tempo of their conversation that had shielded him from his own shyness. "
130 " Paulson said there was a principle in aesthetics: the more you prettify something, the more you risk undermining its value. Its essential value. "
131 " And sometimes the places that happenstance sent you weren’t as vague as a direction, sometimes they were as steel-cast and unforgiving as a set of rails. And sometimes the only way to jump the rails and set a new course was to have a wreck. "
132 " More than that, he thought she had a certain bravery he rarely encountered and couldn't define: it was something to do with a willingness to look beyond the surface of things, into their heart, and he wondered if that was an essential part of being an artist. It was more than just curiosity, it seemed to him she was restless for truth somehow. "
133 " So crows must spend a lot of the day wondering what they are supposed to do now, what they are here for, and that seemed like a cruel existential dilemma for anyone who didn’t have TV. It made me look at the painting in a different light: that the crow was more mischievous than he seemed at first. He was handing off this idea of choice to the horse the way the serpent handed off the apple. Poor horse. It was leap and die or live and be haunted by the ability to choose. Which when I think about it, might be one definition of consciousness. I pitied just about everybody. "
134 " He had learned that it was much less a distraction than a form of connection: of connecting to the best part of himself, and to a discipline that demanded he stay open to every sense, to the nuances of the season and to the instrument of his own body, his own agility or fatigue. "
135 " Isn't that strange? To be able to feel so much tenderness for a person, and I did, and powerful attraction, sometimes, and yet feel no love. It seems cruel, almost monstrous. I mean I can love a bug. I have watched a spider weaving her web in the evening, in the young alder branches along the river, and I have loved her. Truly. Or a small moth trying to beat her way off the water of a dark pool, her soaked wings stuck to the surface as if by glue. And gently slid a leaf beneath her and lifted her to the ground, praying that her wings would dry without damage. I've done that. And yet I could not love my wife. "
― Peter Heller
136 " He poured the two stainless travel mugs full of the steeped tea and shook brown sugar into his and stirred it with a twig and sat on his log and couldn’t relax. "
137 " The difference maybe between the living and the dead: the living often want to be numb the dead never do, if they never want anything. "
138 " Then it sits with you, the Pain puts its arm over your shoulders. It is your closest friend. Steadfast. And at night you can’t bear to hear your own breath unaccompanied by another and underneath the big stillness like a score is the roaring of the cataract of everything being and being torn away. Then. The Pain is lying beside your side, close. Does not bother you with the sound even of breathing. "
139 " One weird thing: the GPS still works. The satellites, the military or whoever put them up there to spin around us and tell us where we are, they still send their signals, triangulate my position, the little Garmin mounted on the yoke still flashes a terrain warning if it thinks I am getting too close to high ground. "
140 " What more really can be at stake except life itself, which is why maybe artists are always equating the two and driving everybody crazy by insisting that art is life. Well. Cut us some slack. It’s harder work than one might imagine, and riskier, and takes a very special and dear kind of mad person. "