“A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”
“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”
“Truth must be stalwart, Loyalty absolute, Generosity unstinting, while Appearance and Convention were children of the giant Hyprocrisy and must be put to flight”.”
“To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround it with a thousand distractive schemes. These schemes, in turn, drive them deeper and deeper into the darkness and light (which is their mortification and their reward), and confront them with a choice. They may either slacken and fall back, accepting the relief of a rational view and the approval of others, or they may push on, and, by falling, arise. When and if by their unforgivable stubborness they finally burst through to worlds upon worlds of motionless light, they are no longer called afflicted or insane. They are called saints." Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin”
“It has been my experience that guilt can burst through the smallest breach and cover the landscape, and abide in it in pools and danknesses, just as native as water.”
“He rooted for the Mets, he wore Foot of the Loom underwear, and he drove a Buick. His loyalties were carved in stone and he wasn't about to be impressed with some upstart of a toaster salesman who drove a Bonneville.”