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One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow QUOTES

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow QUOTES

1 " Beyond the borders of the land that was his lay the wilderness that was its own. The upthrust stone, the shoulders of the Bighorns, reddish gray where they stood near to the homestead and blue where they stood far—bluer, dissipating veils of blue lost against an indistinct horizon. The pale gold of autumn grass like the rough hide of an animal, wind-riffled down the mountain’s flank. The low trough where the river ran, a score mark in wet clay—dark, shadow-and-green, redolent of moving water, of soil that never went dry. And the infinite sweep of the prairie, yellow shaded with folds of violet until, a hundred miles away or more, the whole plain was swallowed by color and consumed, taken up by the lower edge of a sagging purple sky. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

2 " Before the power of Nature, its inescapable presence and fixed dominion, all men and women are as mice in the talons of the hawk. In a city, I could well imagine—surrounded by streets and commerce and carriages, everyone dressed Sunday-fine, with the forests and fields only a thin shadow on a distant horizon—a body might trick itself into believing that mankind held the world in its white-knuckled hand. But on our homestead, the wilderness ran right up to the front door. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

3 " God is said to be great, the worm told me, so great you cannot see Him. But God is small, with hands like threads, and they reach for you everywhere you go. The hands touch everything—even you, even me. What falls never falls; what grows has grown a thousand times, and will live a thousand times more. Wherever hand touches hand, the Oneness comes to stay. Once God has made a thing whole, it cannot be broken again. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

4 " whatever a body expects their life to be, that’s what they’ll make of it in the end. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

5 " Each had taken up the truths they had trained themselves to see, drinking anger and hate or loneliness and despair as eagerly as the summer-parched prairie drank the rain. I ain’t fool enough to think I’m wise, exactly, but I have learned one scrap of wisdom, at least: whatever a body expects their life to be, that’s what they’ll make of it in the end. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

6 " It’s winter that raises the apple from the earth. The bitter cold, the ice like knives, the crystals of ice underground that cut into the hard coat and breach the soft, pale place inside where root and stem and leaf are one. The apple won’t be coddled. Until it knows true suffering, the seed won’t sprout at all. The tree will never live. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

7 " What seemed an individual, whole and distinct, was tied inextricably to its neighbors. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

8 " Clyde "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

9 " the sky became reality—the solidness, the wholeness—and the earth below was ethereal, shifting through veils of color, parting light with shadow and shadow with light, all the way out to the horizon where a sheet of rain slanted between Heaven and earth, its edges indistinct, swallowing prairie and sky in a motionless blue mist. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

10 " One for the blackbird, one for the crow, one for the cutworm, and one to grow. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

11 " So you hardened yourself and hoped the fear couldn’t touch you. But once you’ve turned yourself to stone, love can’t reach you, either. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

12 " The seasons don’t cease to change because we haven’t the time to plant or tend or harvest, because grief like a hailstorm comes up sudden and frightens us with its noise. Once the storm rolls on, the fields remain, and life goes on, whatever we prefer. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

13 " If they could open their hands and release the old guide ropes to which they had always clung—anger and timidity, lonesomeness and fear, judgment and the fear of being judged—they would free their spirits to seek and find a new way of being, new eyes through which to see. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

14 " The leaves turned in the river wind, shivering, sparkling like gold or like the delicate crystal drops of the chandeliers she had seen "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

15 " Spite surrounded her in a thick cloud, buzzing minutely in a harsh tin voice like the deerflies that descend in summer’s heat to bite and drink your blood. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

16 " The oaten heaviness of the air, the thick-porridge density of it, the way its odor of dryness and limpness sank down among fresher scents of green and dew and lay there, immobile as a dead thing. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

17 " And even beyond, to the endless flat forever of the untouched prairie, where a flock of blackbirds had risen, black against a gray sky, all of them twisting and turning high above the earth, a dance of gladness in the brief respite between the storm that had passed and the storm yet to come. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

18 " I ain’t fool enough to think I’m wise, exactly, but I have learned one scrap of wisdom, at least: whatever a body expects their life to be, that’s what they’ll make of it in the end. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

19 " There was no use trying to convince some folks of anything. They only accepted the truth when the truth caught up with them, "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

20 " Sun and soil and leaf and root, animal and stone, bone, human strength, human weakness, all moved together, worked together, dictating one great pattern of dependence. Each creature and plant, every person, fitted into its place. The perfection of the weave sped his pulse; his ears roared with awe. "

― , One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow