Donald Harington > Quotes

“If you are destined to become a writer, you can't help it. If you can help it, you aren't destined to become a writer. The frustrations and disappointments, not even to mention the unspeakable loneliness, are too unbearable for anyone who doesn't have a deep sense of being unable to avoid writing.”
― Donald Harington

“Words themselves are all the ghosts we need.”
― Donald Harington, Ekaterina

“This here will be the future tense and you will be able to do anything you will like in it.”
― Donald Harington, With

“The only grown-up other than Jacob who ever came into his schoolroom was Eli Willard.

School was in session one day when the Connecticut itinerant reappeared after long absence, bringing Jacob's glass and other merchandise. Jacob seized him and presented him to the class. 'Boys and girls, this specimen here is a Peddler. You don't see them very often. They migrate, like the geese flying over. This one comes maybe once a year, like Christmas. But he ain't dependable, like Christmas. He's dependable like rainfall. A Peddler is a feller who has got things you ain't got, and he'll give 'em to ye, and then after you're glad you got 'em he'll tell ye how much cash money you owe him fer 'em. If you ain't got cash money, he'll give credit, and collect the next time he comes 'round, and meantime you work hard to git the money someway so's ye kin pay him off. Look at his eyes. Notice how they are kinder shiftly-like. Now, class, the first question is: why is this feller's eyes shiftly-like?”
― Donald Harington, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

“Stay More' is synonymous with 'Status Quo' in fact, there are people who believe, or who like to believe, that the name of the town was intended as an entreaty, beseeching the past to remain present.”
― Donald Harington, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

“Major: you have the honor to report that the numbers of men now under your command qualifies you for promotion to colonel. But you ask me to believe that your regiments assaulted Rebel forces in a pitched battle of over two hours duration, all the while steadily employing the heavy field pieces recently shipped to you, without one single battle death on either side. Sir, that is not warfare. That is fraternization with the enemy!”
― Donald Harington, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

“Jacob realized that if she kept on going like that he might very well cry out himself. But just then a voice outside the wagon called "JAKE! AIR YE IN THAR?" and he knew it was Sarah. "ANSWER ME!" she requested, so he did. "Yeah, I'm in here, but I'll be right out." He was bucking beneath the weight of Virdie in an effort to finish. "WHAT'RE YE DOIN IN THAR, JAKE?" Sarah wanted to know. "I'm havin words-" he panted "-with this here Rebel foe." He was nearly there, although he realized that the wagon must be visibly shaking. Virdie suddenly stuffed her dress into her mouth, but it was not enough to keep another one of her long groans from coming out. "JAKE!" Sarah hollered. "YOU AINT A-HURTING HER, AIR YE?" "Jist a little," he answered, "to teach her a lesson." And then he got there, rapturously, reflecting, Godalmighty, if I could git this reg'lar, maybe I'd jine the Rebels after all.”
― Donald Harington, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

“Eli Willard just looked at her for a long moment, and then he announced, 'Lady of the Lake strikes iceberg in mid-Atlantic; 215 drown. New York City fire destroys 700 buildings. Japanese earthquake kills 12,000. Worldwide cholera epidemic kills millions. Wages rise, but prices rise faster. Financial crash occurs on Van Buren's 36th day in office. Nation begins first great depression. Bank failures and closings spread like plague. 200,000 are unemployed. Business bankrupt; only pawnbrokers prosper. Van Buren declares ten-hour days on all federal jobs. There. Does that make you feel any better?”
― Donald Harington, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

“Shitfire!”
― Donald Harington, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

“There is a popular saying, “More rare than pine is the smell of pining”—which is rare indeed, for there are few pine trees in this part of the Ozarks.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“So in his maturity—he was no longer young, but had lived a full circuit of the earth around the sun—he had dropped his Crustian name and chosen to call himself Gregor Samsa Ingledew, the full meaning of which was known, or appreciated, only by himself.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“On any given night, after breakfast, a couple dozen or more members of this Loafer’s Court could be found lolling around Doc Swain and Squire Hank, listening to them holding forth on the ancient stories of Stay More, swapping tall tales, and waxing prophetic about their favorite subject, which was The Bomb, particularly the irreligious, anti-Rapture view of it held by many, who did not believe that Man would save the righteous from that great explosion but rather that Man himself would perish in the holocaust, and the roosterroaches would have the onerous responsibility of inheriting the earth, something they did not particularly desire.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“The ancestor of this Woman, Sam’s Woman, had been a proprietress of this merchandise store, which occupied the central room of her dwelling, her bedroom and sitting room occupying one side of Parthenon. The ancestor-Woman, a fabled demigoddess named Latha, had later abandoned Parthenon, and it had remained unoccupied through countless generations of roosterroaches, just as all the other buildings of Stay More were uninhabited and most of them disappearing through rot, neglect, windstorm and rainstorm, fire and vandalism.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“Doc Colvin Swain was the seventh son of a seventh son, which Ozark tradition indicates as infallibly as the daily setting of the sun that he was destined to become a physician, even in spite of himself.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“Isaac’s wife Salina “caught religion” when the Presbyterian produced an eclipse of the sun, and although she was most partial to the Baptist, she attended all the church services in Stay More, and Isaac sometimes accompanied her out of curiosity, which is the bottom rung on the ladder of motives for going to church, the other rungs being, in ascending hierarchy: 2, being too timid to refuse, 3, a sense of duty, 4, a desire to mingle with others, 5, a desire to learn the means of salvation, 6, a desire to be saved, 7, lust for paradise in the hereafter, 8, schizophrenic need to need, 9, insanity, and 10, sainthood.”
― Donald Harington, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks

“The Golden Age of Stay More would remain only the subject of endless legends and embellished conjectures among the tale-telling roosterroaches until after The Bomb, when according to Crustian belief, Joshua Crust Himself would be resurrected from the west and take everyone in a Rapture to live on the right hand of Man in the perfect Ozark Golden Age of yore.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“This Man, our Man, was not even of any kinship to those ancient folk of Stay More; He was a furriner, from distant parts, an outlander, a newcomer, even if He had lived in Holy House longer than all but the oldest roosterroaches could remember. Doc Swain was one of these: he could remember, as a child, nearly two years before, watching Man move into the old Stay More Hotel, which had once been the home for human Ingledews before becoming a hotel, and had been abandoned for years before Man moved into it and installed the Fabulous Fridge and the pantry and breadbasket and grocery sack and other good things. Although the Man did not dress like the ancient Men of Stay More, or talk like Them, or practice Their customs, He was still Man, and the only Man we had. He might not be as Almighty as the Crustians thought He was, but He was the Lord.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“The ways of Man are inscrutable. Man giveth, and Man taketh away. Blessed be the Name of Man (though Brother Chidiock Tichborne, who had a fine old name himself, had to admit that he did not know the name of his Man, nor of the Woman either).”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“Man had a habit of routinely taking up and firing a revolver at the roosterroaches who dwelt in His house, with westerly accuracy depending on how much He had had to drink. Other ministers before Brother Tichborne had determined that this shooting and westering of chosen roosterroaches was both a form of punishment and an expression of Man’s love, and therefore the shooting, or the act of being shot, was called not a westering but a Rapture.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“In certain isolated coves of the Ozark Mountains, up until the most recent times, the folk (both humanfolk and roosterroachfolk) still celebrated, particularly in May as the earth began to grow, what can only be called Cerealia, rites in honor of Ceres, the godhead above the god of Roman Man, or rather goddesshead: Mother Earth herself, protectress of all the fruits of the earth and from whom the sacred word “cereal” comes. The young of Man had often conducted their “play-party” as a form of Cerealia, and the roosterroaches, following Man in all things, did likewise.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1

“Why this prudery? Being already possessed of the uncommon wisdom of the Ingledews, which he refined through countless hours of meditation, Sam Ingledew understood in time that the essential reason for all sexual modesty is to give sex mystery, without which it would be dull, commonplace, obligatory, and uninviting. Modesty makes sex hard-to-get and therefore challenging, and therefore worthy of all one’s waking obsessions and half of one’s dreams. If it were otherwise, the generations would not generate.”
― Donald Harington, The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington, Volume 1