Stephen Harrigan > Quotes

“He watched the young actress playing the central part of a wife who mistakenly believes her husband has wronged her. She was overly trained in the teapot school of acting, striking expressive poses and attitudes as the mood of the story demanded.”
― Stephen Harrigan, A Friend of Mr. Lincoln

“They also, in the worried opinion of one Mexican official, “go about with their constitution in their pocket,” never quite accepting that they had become foreign citizens in a foreign land.”
― Stephen Harrigan, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas

“Austin confided as much in his private correspondence. “Strangers to each other,” he wrote, “to me, and to the laws and languages of the country, they come here with all the ideas of americans and expect to see and understand the laws they are governed by, and many very many of them have all the licentiousness and wild turbulence of frontiersmen.”
― Stephen Harrigan, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas

“But to his surprise, just before daylight, he found himself being aroused from a slumber he had not known he had achieved.”
― Stephen Harrigan, The Gates of the Alamo

“We spend so much effort trying to make things square or whatever, and nature just does what it does.”
― Stephen Harrigan, Water and Light: A Diver's Journey to a Coral Reef

“It'll be an unholy muddle, that's for sure," he was saying. "Me and Hardin and Baker all with our claws out for the same seat. The thing will have to be done carefully or we'll end up with out tidy little Whig house divided."
"Why don't you take turns?"
"It's worth thinking about, but no matter how much you'd like politics to be a cotillion it just naturally wants to be a dirt fight.”
― Stephen Harrigan, A Friend of Mr. Lincoln