Kimbery Spells

“When you’re talking, Steve,” Jock MacKenzie had told him once, “and I don’t care who it’s to or what it’s about, the important thing is knowing when to stop. Never say anything that doesn’t improve on silence.”
― Richard Yates, A Good School

“Seemed like you could stretch out your arms on either side and touch the mountains. Straight up they went, dark and feathered with treetops, and left a thin slice of stars above us.

Way off, a mourning dove called, long and throaty, and the mountains picked it up and echoed the sound over and over, carrying it farther and farther away until you wondered how many mountains and hollows that call would travel--and it died away, so far, it was more like a memory than a sound.”
― Forrest Carter, The Education of Little Tree

“powerless suckers who believed in the American dream scrambling to the suburbs because they, the big boys, wanted a bigger percentage. He felt it, or thought he felt it, as they stood by the front door. There was a connection: a man whose father was dead and a woman whose father was about to die, a sense of wanting to belong, standing in the warm vestibule, she in her farm-girl dress, with a job that paid taxes and drew no cops, no Joe Pecks, no complicated phone calls from complicated people trying to pick your pocket with one”
― James McBride, Deacon King Kong

“Failing all else, their last resort will be: 'This was good enough for our ancestors, and who are we to question their wisdom?' Then they'll settle back in their chairs, with an air of having said the lst word on the subject -- as if it would be a major disaster for anyone to be caught being wiser than his ancestors!”
― Sir Thomas More, Utopia