Jude Brigley

“Coming down off the trail, I am lost in my own thoughts and unprepared when a bear chugs across the path just before it gives out on the gravel road. I am so distracted that I keep walking towards the bear. I only stop when it rears, stands on hind legs, and stares at me, sensitive nose pressed into the air, weak eyes searching. I have never been this close to a wild bear before, but I am not frightened. There is no menace in its stance; it is not even curious. The bear seems to know who or what I am. The bear is not impressed. ”
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

“He remembers which sister
I like least and asks

how she is doing.
(lines 9-11 of the poem 'Divorce')”
― Carrie Etter, The Tethers

“He scraped through the dark sand to the center house, two stories, both pouring bands of light into the fog. There was warmth and gaiety within, through the downstairs window he could see young people gathered around a piano, their singing mocking the forces abroad on this cruel night. She was there, proptected by happiness and song and the good. He was separated from her only by a sand yard and a dark fence, by a lighted window and by her protectors.
He stood there until he was trembling with pity and rage. Then he fled, but his flight was slow as the flight in a dream, impeded by the deep sand and the blurring hands of the fog. He fled from the goodness of that home, and his hatred for Laurel throttled his brain. If she had come back to him, he would not be shut out, an outcast in a strange, cold world. ”
― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
― Frederick Douglass