Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

“Don't go gittin faintified on me.”

“You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks...Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life...I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on. —Penny Baxter”

“Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer.”

“العقل البشري يبعثر اهتماماته كما لو كانت من زغب الأشواك، كل الرياح تثيرها و تحركها”

“You do somethin' for me? Go tell Twink I'll meet her at the old grove Tuesday about dusk-dark."Jody was frozen.He burst out, "I won't do it. I hate her. Ol' yellow-headed somethin'.”

“He wrote: Dear ollever; yor ol twinkk has dun gode up the rivver. im gladd. yor friend jody.”

“Jody said, "Ma, you're shore good.""Oh, yes. When it's rations.""Well, I'd a heap ruther you was good about rations and mean about other things.""Oh, I be mean, be I?""Only about jest a very few things," he soothed her.”

“They listened with flattering attention. He was filled with enthusiasm. He began at the beginning and tried to tell it as he thought Penny would do. Half-way through, he looked down at the cake. He lost interest in the account."Then Pa shot him," he ended abruptly.”

“Eulalie in a remote fashion belonged to him, Jody, to do with as he pleased, if only to throw potatoes at her.”

“...a pie so delicate, so luscious, that I hope to be propped up on my dying bed and fed a generous portion. Then I think that I should refuse outright to die, for life would be too good to relinquish.”

“Sift each of us through the great sieve of circumstance and you have a residue, great or small as the case may be, that is the man or the woman.”

“Good" is what helps us or at least does not hinder. "Evil" is whatever harms us or interferes with us, according to our own selfish standards.”

“We were bred of earth before we were bred of our mothers. Once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend, or any human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.”

“He was addled with April. He was dizzy with Spring. He was as drunk as Lem Forrester on a Saturday night.”

“I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.”

“Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages..It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed, but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its sesonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers, and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time..." ”

“You know what I wisht I had, Ma? A pouch like a 'possum, to tote things.--The Yearling”

“This, then, was hunger. This was what his mother had meant when she had said, "We'll all go hongry." He had laughed, for he had thought he had known hunger, and it was faintly pleasant. He knew now that it had been only appetite. This was another thing.”

“Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever.”

“We cannot live without the Earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men”

“Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity and we are all individualists here.”

“A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one.”