Home > Author > Padgett Powell

Padgett Powell QUOTES

Padgett Powell QUOTES

1 " Now she understood a few things: that the American academy, which one might have thought the place to defend freedom of speech, had been the seat and soul of abrogating freedom of speech, if the first assault on its freedom can be said to be restricting, or handcuffing speech. The day she heard “redneck” on NPR, she turned NPR off, not because broadcasters were still using the term, but because she knew one day they would not be. In fact, she had a vision of the quiet moment backstage at a Boston studio when a good, surprised correspondent was let go for saying “redneck” the last time it would be said. "

― Padgett Powell , Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men

2 " She thought it funny how the poor environment had been raped just fine until there was a sufficient excess of the people who had effected the raping to produce sufficient numbers of themselves who were sufficiently idle that they might begin to protest the raping of the environment, which was irretrievably lost to the raping by that point.

And this would be the great soothing cathedral music, the stopping of the chainsaws amid the patter of acid rain, that all good citizens would listen to for the quarter-century it took them all to wire up to cyberspace and forget about the lost hopeless run-over gang-ridden land, reproducing madly still all the while, inside their bunkers listening to NPR. "

― Padgett Powell , Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men

3 " disputing nothing is the first step through the difficult door of happiness "

― Padgett Powell , You & Me

4 " Isn't it true that there is a rare kind of person who perceives, as does a good dog, that life is doing something meaningful, and who discovers what it is and goes about doing it with a spirit of moderate hustle, and there is a not rare kind of person who perceives none of this and who goes about doing what is necessary in a spirit of aggrievedness? "

― Padgett Powell , The Interrogative Mood

5 " Have you come over time to think that you know more now than you did when you were young, know less now than when young, know now there is so much more to know than you knew there was to know when young that it is moot whether you think you knew more then than now or less, or do you now know that you never knew anything at all and never will and only the bluster of youth persuaded you that you did or would? "

― Padgett Powell , The Interrogative Mood

6 " in the event that armed men of any sort enter the building, watch their feet closely. "

― Padgett Powell , The Imperative Mood

7 " If the observation were made to you that "Strangers become intimate, and as intimacy grows they lower their guards and less mind their manners until errors are made, which decreases intimacy until estrangement exceeds that which existed before the strangers ever met," would you be inclined to agree? "

― Padgett Powell , The Interrogative Mood

8 " Life is a sandwich of activity between two periods of bed-wetting, "

― Padgett Powell , The Interrogative Mood

9 " Is a gesture of charity genuine or is it a kind of deep moral tax write-off? "

― Padgett Powell , The Interrogative Mood

10 " The main thing is: Don't take any shit.
That's the main thing.
The unmain thing is: You are not going to figure anything out except how to get other people to take shit, so forget about everything except not taking any yourself. "

― Padgett Powell , Typical: Stories

11 " Do you appreciate that an oyster has, among its other organs, a heart? "

― Padgett Powell , The Interrogative Mood

12 " If you could have a famous writer, dead or alive, write an obituary for you and really puff you up to have been something you weren’t, perhaps, or otherwise take liberties with your memory, what writer would you choose? "

― Padgett Powell , The Interrogative Mood

13 " Potato salad in the South is nothing less than the principal smuggler of cholesterol into the festive, careless heart. It is pure poison beneath the facade of bland puritan propriety. It is the food of choice at any food banquet of smiling relatives who celebrate tacitly among themselves the dark twining of two of their promising youth. "

― Padgett Powell , Edisto Revisited

14 " the levity of the doomed has no equal. "

― Padgett Powell , Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men

15 " Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it's spoiled paper. "

― Padgett Powell

16 " in a new world behave in a new way as a new man. unhorse the conquistador. "

― Padgett Powell , 5 Stories and a Piece of You & Me

17 " alternate the theories you entertain about all things. "

― Padgett Powell , The Imperative Mood

18 " try to recall the person you thought you were and the moment you began to realize you are not that person, and try to grasp and appreciate the high quality of lunacy required for you to have ever thought you were that person. "

― Padgett Powell , The Imperative Mood

19 " Would it require more energy than you have in order for you to really lose it, or do you think really losing it can be a function of having too little energy to prevent losing it? Do the people you do not wish to talk to far exceed the number you do wish to talk to? Do you have much to say to even those to whom you do wish to speak? Do you know where it went wrong for you? Do you own any good copper? Are you favorably disposed to American Indian causes but less so if you must say Native American causes? Are you more at ease in a veneer of civilization or in a true hardwood of barbary? "

― Padgett Powell , The Interrogative Mood

20 " Have you seen a person recently so delicious-looking that, were you and this person to be scrambling for ice-cream change with your arms in the sofa and your faces laid on the cushions looking at each other as you felt for coins and the ice-cream truck dinged on by and your hands in there felt only the lint of the sofa scrofula and your faces were fairly close across a distance of that knobby nylon terrain, you might feel compelled to slide you face toward this delicious-looking person’s and kiss him or her - have you seen anyone like this recently? "

― Padgett Powell , The Interrogative Mood