Home > Work > Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker
1 " All paths lead to the same place, and that place is whatever comes next. "
― Gregory Maguire , Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker
2 " You might forget a story, but you can never unhear a story. "
3 " One day he would finish the job of dying he'd begun in childhood/ "
4 " What’s missing from the literature of our species are the stories of the peasants. The filthy illiterate. Those with no firm address, no surname. No one to impress, nothing to lose. But the poor tell stories, too. "
5 " Death might be the only way forward for someone. Or it might seem so at the time "
6 " Chopin’s theme, a simple descending descant the first time round, articulated itself in the repeat with nuanced embellishment. It was music remembering itself. It meant something different, something more, to hear those simple phrases repeated so soon, qualified by chromatic variations. Clarifications. Not redundancy, but a hypothesis about how consolation works. A second chance at getting it. A second chance at life. "
7 " Those born dull remain dull "
8 " Lost is not an address, it's not permission to fail, it's not an excuse. "
9 " How many times in a life, he thought, will I lie down in a darkness whose character I cannot imagine, to see what daybreak reveals of my new circumstances? Or is that every day of my life? "
10 " And yet what now is hidden in shadows below may become more welcome to you in the long run. "
11 " But those are legends and lore; they are faith and fictions. Not everyone is a character in a story. "
12 " Those who sit in the house of grief will someday sit in the garden. "
13 " How like a spoon with a razor edge is human edge. "
14 " You might forget an event but you can never go back to living as you did before it's influence was applied upon you "
15 " Simpatico, it’s Italian for ‘sympathetic.’ Hearts beating to the same pulse. That’s what music does for one, you know—I mean, for two. For more. It trains hearts to lean in the same direction. Sympathetically. "
16 " You might forget a story, but you can never unhear a story. By that token, you might forget an event, but you can never go back to living as you did before its hidden influence was applied upon you. "
17 " place, "
18 " Mostly his mind wandered. But it didn’t have anywhere special to wander to. "
19 " A fellow needed two names, one for affection and the other for civic duty. "
20 " Luck and grace: an unmatching pair of boots with which to address a long dusty road. "