Kent Haruf > Quotes

“You have to believe in yourself despite the evidence.”
― Kent Haruf

“Who does ever get what they want? It doesn’t seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It’s always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“And so we know the satisfaction of hate. We know the sweet joy of revenge. How it feels good to get even. Oh, that was a nice idea Jesus had. That was a pretty notion, but you can't love people who do evil. It's neither sensible or practical. It's not wise to the world to love people who do such terrible wrong. There is no way on earth we can love our enemies. They'll only do wickedness and hatefulness again. And worse, they'll think they can get away with this wickedness and evil, because they'll think we're weak and afraid. What would the world come to?

But I want to say to you here on this hot July morning in Holt, what if Jesus wasn't kidding? What if he wasn't talking about some never-never land? What if he really did mean what he said two thousand years ago? What if he was thoroughly wise to the world and knew firsthand cruelty and wickedness and evil and hate? Knew it all so well from personal firsthand experience? And what if in spite of all that he knew, he still said love your enemies? Turn your cheek. Pray for those who misuse you. What if he meant every word of what he said? What then would the world come to?

And what if we tried it? What if we said to our enemies: We are the most powerful nation on earth. We can destroy you. We can kill your children. We can make ruins of your cities and villages and when we're finished you won't even know how to look for the places where they used to be. We have the power to take away your water and to scorch your earth, to rob you of the very fundamentals of life. We can change the actual day into actual night. We can do these things to you. And more.

But what if we say, Listen: Instead of any of these, we are going to give willingly and generously to you. We are going to spend the great American national treasure and the will and the human lives that we would have spent on destruction, and instead we are going to turn them all toward creation. We'll mend your roads and highways, expand your schools, modernize your wells and water supplies, save your ancient artifacts and art and culture, preserve your temples and mosques. In fact, we are going to love you. And again we say, no matter what has gone before, no matter what you've done: We are going to love you. We have set our hearts to it. We will treat you like brothers and sisters. We are going to turn our collective national cheek and present it to be stricken a second time, if need be, and offer it to you. Listen, we--

But then he was abruptly halted.”
― Kent Haruf, Benediction

“I do love this physical world. I love this physical life with you. And the air and the country. The backyard, the gravel in the back alley. The grass. The cool nights. Lying in bed talking with you in the dark.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“He wanted to think of words that would make some difference but there were none in any language he knew that were sufficient to the moment or that would change a single thing.”
― Kent Haruf, Eventide

“Who would have thought at this time in our lives that we’d still have something like this. That it turns out we’re not finished with changes and excitements. And not all dried up in body and spirit.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“I made up my mind I’m not going to pay attention to what people think. I’ve done that too long—all my life. I’m not going to live that way anymore.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“I just want to live simply and pay attention to what's happening each day.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“You have been good for me. What more could anyone ask for? I’m a better person than I was before we got together. That’s your doing.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“But we didn’t know anything in our twenties when we were first married. It was all just instinct and the patterns we’d grown up with.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“Who would have thought at this time in our lives that we’d still have something like this.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“A girl is different. They want things. They need things on a regular schedule. Why, a girl's got purposes you and me can't even imagine. They got ideas in their heads you and me can't even suppose.”
― Kent Haruf, Plainsong

“Honey, Maggie Jones said. Victoria. Listen to me. You're here now. This is where you are.”
― Kent Haruf, Plainsong

“So life hasn't turned out right for either of us, not the way we expected,' he said.
'Except it feels good now, at this moment.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“You’re going to die some day without ever having had enough trouble in your life. Not of the right kind anyway.”
― Kent Haruf, Plainsong

“Oh I feel better already talking with you here next to me.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“You are still in love with her. No. But I think I'm in love a little with the memory of her.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“Where are you?
You mean where in the house?
Are you in your bedroom?
Yes, I've been reading. Is this some kind of phone sex?
It's just two old people talking in the dark, Addie said.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“You can't fix things, can you, Louis said. We always want to. But we can't.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“It seems to me nothing man has done or built on this land is an improvement over what was here before.”
― Kent Haruf, West of Last Chance

“Sins of omission, Louis said.
You don’t believe in sins.
I believe there are failures of character, like I said before. That’s a sin.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“Not like I was. I’ve come to believe in some kind of afterlife. A return to our true selves, a spirit self. We’re just in this physical body till we go back to spirit.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

“You understand? If you can read you can cook. You can always feed yourselves. You remember that.”
― Kent Haruf, Plainsong

“And they had folded his brother's hands across his suited chest, as if he would be preserved in this sanguine pose forever, but only the heavy callouses visible at the sides of his hands seemed real. It was only the callouses that appeared to be familiar and believable.”
― Kent Haruf, Eventide

“You don't deserve it, he said aloud. Don't ever begin to think that you do.”
― Kent Haruf, Plainsong

“I don't imagine I'll ever get over missing him, Raymond said. Some things you don't get over. I believe this'll be one of them.”
― Kent Haruf, Eventide

“Here was this man Tom Guthrie in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the sun was just coming up.”
― Kent Haruf, Plainsong

“The evening wasn’t cold yet... But the air was turning sharp, with a fall feeling of loneliness coming. Something unaccountable pending in the air.”
― Kent Haruf, Plainsong

“That was on a night in August. Dad Lewis died early that morning and the young girl Alice from next door got lost in the evening and then found her way home in the dark by the streetlights of town and so returned to the people who loved her. And in the fall the days turned cold and the leaves dropped off the trees and in the winter the wind blew from the mountains and out on the high plains of Holt County there were overnight storms and three-day blizzards.”
― Kent Haruf, Benediction

“Love is the most important part of life, isn't it. If you have love you can live in this world in a true way and if you love each other you can see past everything and accept what you don't understand and forgive what you don't know or don't like. Love is all. Love is patient and boundless and right-hearted and long-suffering. I hope you may love each other all your days of life together. And I hope you may have a great many years of those days.”
― Kent Haruf