What Folks Think They Want

I had learned that much from taking out curious visitors.  They wanted to find treasure upon beach, they wanted to see monsters, but they did not want to think about how and when those monsters lived.  It challenged their idea of the world too much. - pgs 281-282

Remarkable Creatures
Tracy Chevalier

Eccentric, Languid Thoughts

"When people encountered them years later ... there was an aura about them.  You could not put your finger on it, but you knew these women shared secret lagoons of knowledge.  Secret codes and lore and lingo stretching back into that fluid time before air conditioning dried up the rich, heavy humidity that used to hang over the porches... drenching cotton blouses, beads of sweat tickling the skin, slowing people down so the world entered them in an unhurried way.  A thick stew of life that seeped into the very blood of people, so that eccentric, languid thoughts simmered inside.  Thoughts that would not come again after porches were enclosed, after the climate was controlled, after all windows were shut tight, and the sounds of the neighborhood were drowned out by the noise of the television set.

...

But Sidda was tired of being vigilant, alert, sharp.  She longed for porch friendship, ... the unplanned improvisational laziness.  She wanted to soak the words time management out of her lexicon.  She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down into the uncharted beautiful fertile, musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell."

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood 
Rebecca Wells

Reality and Life

Indeed, it is not all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk and immensity to reflect upon... Sometimes in the midst of his work... his reason... would revolt. All that had happened to him would appear impossible. He would say to himself: "It is a dream."

Les Miserables 

Victor Hugo

 

Things That Are Beyond Forgetable

We all knew what horse he would ride ... No man who sat him once could ever forget him.  Now when the trail is a lost occupation, and reverie and reminiscence carry the mind back to that day, there are friends and faces that may be forgotten, but there are horses that never will be.  pg. 81

The Log of a Cowboy 
Andy Adams