“And thy land says to thee: Ah, my child of far-off father! Come, lift me, lift me a little while, that poppies and wheat may blow on the level wind that moves between my breast and thine! Then sink with me, and we will make one mound…”
“It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again.”
Over the past year or so of writing true stories I have reached the conclusion that we are in fact bottomless wells of stories. I also have had a growing awareness of the relationship between strong emotions and vivid memories.
And it came about in the camps along the roads, on the ditch banks beside the streams, under the sycamores, that the story teller grew into being, so that the people gathered in the low firelight to hear the gifted ones.
Edward Hopper…is the writer and actor, and he shows his painting to Bud and Carl, the producer and the director. They say, “Yeaahhhh, Edward, it’s nice, real nice, I like that, it’s kinda moody. We’re just afraid that it’s kinda lonely for what we’re going for here.” And Edward Hopper responds, “Well, that’s the point. The goddamn painting is called ‘Loneliness.'”
“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head.” — Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”