Home > Author > Paulette Jiles
1 " The world was in truth made of jackstraws. The world was very combustible, the human body was partible in ways heretofore unimagined. What held the civilized world together was the thinnest tissue of nothing but human will. Civilization was not in the natural order but was some wort of willed invention held taut like a fabric or a sail against the chaos of the winds. And why we had invented it, or how we knew to invent it, was beyond him.Newmann had seen some truth that was completely out of his power to put into words. But he had come away knowing that even though the world of civilization was made of straw and lantern slides, he must live in it as if it were solid. Even when the heat of the lantern itself burnt away the illusions and a black hole appeared in the middle of the slide. "
― Paulette Jiles , Enemy Women
2 " Then took the quilt out of its linen wrapper for the pleasure of the brilliant colors and the feel of the velvet. The needlework was very fine and regular. Adair hated needlework and she could not imagine sitting and stitching the fine crow’s-foot seams.Writing was the same, the pinching of thoughts into marks on paper and trying to keep your cursive legible, trying to think of the next thing to say and then behind you on several sheets of paper you find you have left permanent tracks, a trail, upon which anybody could follow you. Stalking you through your deep woods of private thought. "
3 " If people had true knowledge of the world perhaps they would not take up arms and so perhaps he could be an aggregator of information from distant places and then the world would be a more peaceful place. He had been perfectly serious. That illusion had lasted from age forty-nine to age sixty-five. "
― Paulette Jiles , News of the World
4 " They rode up the faint marks of the old trace where thousands of sojourners walking and riding both had crossed it and before them the buffalo far back in time. She joined the stream of humanity that had gone down that road, just one more story in a stream of narratives both likely and unlikely that were being told somewhere even now, by someone, in a far place. "
5 " Above and behind them the Dipper turned on its great handle as if to pour night itself out onto the dreaming continent and each of its seven stars gleamed from between the fitful clouds. "
6 " What held the civilized world together was the thinnest tissue of nothing but human will. "
7 " The road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting. "
8 " Johanna bent her head far back to look up into the leafy canopy and the rainy sky. There was a cautious wonder on her face. She said something in Kiowa in a low voice. So much water, such giant trees, each possessing a spirit. Drops like jewels cascaded from their spidery hands. "
9 " The baking wind tore at his hat and he held it by the brim with one hand. It relieved him to look at it, for the great river was like a long tale, of both great joy and great woe. And it seemed to be a story road that a person could take, and it would take him to some place where he could free his mind. Men had striven against one another to control the unreeling river-road, battling at New Madrid and Island Number Ten, at Baton Rouge and Vicksburg, in the heat of the summer and the humid choking air of the malarial swamps. But the river carried away men and guns and the garbage of war, covering it over, washing itself clean again as if they had never been. "
10 " It was a puzzling thing as to why they packed up in towns in the way they did. "
11 " Lascaux was in my time-stream, my ancestry, and Lascaux was the joy and the transport of stories. That's what lasts. It has lasted thirty thousand years. "
― Paulette Jiles , North Spirit: Sojourns Among the Cree and Ojibway
12 " She said something in Kiowa in a happy tone. My name is Ay-ti-Podle, the Cicada, whose song means there is a fruit ripening nearby. She gestured back toward the big bay saddle horse and tossed her hair back. It was as if she wanted to include Pasha in this newfound happiness. "
13 " Ed eccolo, ancora a fantasticare come uno sciocco, ancora a leggere le notizie dal mondo nella speranza che servissero a qualcosa di buono, però alla fine era costretto a portare un'arma alla cintura e aveva una bambina da proteggere, e nessuna storia stampata poteva cambiare la situazione. "
14 " The road ran along the north side of the river, a shy and obsequious road that dodged every bank and lift and wound through the pecan trees and never insisted on its own way. "
15 " It was in this way he asked people to enter another realm of the mind. Places far away, and mysterious, brought to them by details which they did not understand but which entranced them. "
16 " And she understood, all by herself, without reading it in a novel or hearing it on a radio program, that falling passionately in love with someone, without reservation or holding back, was good for the heart. For its valves and its arteries and that invisible shadow of the heart called the soul. Falling in love was good for the soul. "
― Paulette Jiles , Stormy Weather
17 " Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed. He "
18 " Life was not safe and nothing could make it so, neither fashionable dresses nor bank accounts. The baseline of human life was courage. "
19 " Laughter is good for the soul and all your interior works. "
20 " Loss of reputation and the regard of our fellow persons is in any society, from Iceland to Malaysia, a terrible blow to the spirit. It is worse than being penniless and more cutting than the blades of enemies. "
