Lorna > Recent Status Updates

“Remember how the Soviets airbrushed pictures of people who had fallen from grace? We’re putting the pictures back.”

“Maps were more than mere blueprints of the world. They were also stories, prefigurations of success. The old hand-drawn ones reproduced in the books were museums of fine detail, the cartographer’s work as distinct from each other as that of the finest artists.”

“But none of this takes into account the fact that we are here as a result of a crime sponsored by a military regime, a violation of law and human decency so repugnant it is all but unspeakable.”

“Dangerous as it was, they had to march and carry posters with your names and pictures because to go on living they had to refuse to accept your disappearance.” . . . . “It was a form of hope, of love. Neither she nor any of the others can ever tell you how much it cost.”

“Long before you were taken, a group of women began demonstrating in the Plaza de Mayo. They marched every Thursday, rain or shine, in front of the Casa Rosada, demanding an accounting from the government about the whereabouts of their children and grandchildren.”

“So was it all for England, then?” he resumed. “There was a time, of course there was. But who’s England? Which England? England all alone, a citizen of nowhere? I’m European,
Peter. If I had a mission—if I was ever aware of one beyond our business with the enemy, it was to Europe. If I had an unattainable ideal, it was leading Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason. I have it still.”

“When the truth catches up with you, don’t be a hero, run.”

“We are therefore faced with the ludicrous Shakespearean premise whereby the ghosts of the two victims of a fiendish Circus plot rise up to accuse us in the form of their offspring.”

“Where am I? he wondered. The room breathed with things he had only glimpsed in the years of driving through the villages of northern New Mexico. He felt that if he were to go close to the paintings, he would feel heat on his face from the bleached rocks or hear the sound of rain and the heavy breath of horses.”

”I only know what Cristobal did and on the second night of the storm he began to carve a santo of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“And if by chance, Francisco, anyone should wander into this valley while we’re gone,” and here Hipolito turned to Cristobal, “you are to tell them that this place is ours and that it is named Guadalupe, in honor of Our Lady.”

“It’s a pleasant little stream that gurgles through the Alisal against the Gabilan Mountains on the east of the Salinas Valley. The water bumbles over round stones and washes the polished roots of the trees that hold it in. The smell of azaleas and the sleepy smell of sun working with chlorophyll filled the air.”

“Timshel—thou mayest.”

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else
In the world is.”

“Suddenly he knew joy and sorrow felted into one fabric. Courage and fear were one thing too.”

“The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.’

“Who is Caesar?” . . . “In any other place than Rome he’d be a king, great Queen. His family is ancient and august. He is, they say, descended from Aphrodite and Ares through Aeneas and Romulus.”

“No man functions at his best without opposition. I truly cannot bear the thought of being surrounded by sycophants! I’ll be the First Man in Rome the proper way—by constantly striving.”

“Let the dice fly high!” he cried out in the original Greek, kicked Toes gently in the ribs, and rode across the Rubicon into Italia and rebellion.

“What lies across the Rubicon!”

“It is here. I can still turn back. I have not yet abandoned legality, constitutionality. But once I cross this undistinguished river I pass from servant of my country to an aggressor against her. Yet I know all this.”

“. . . Caesar was like Ulysses; that his life strand was so strong it frayed through all those it rubbed against. Knock him down, and up he sprang again like the dragon’s teeth planted in the field of death.”

“. . .bit still, there existed el sabor de esperanza y el olor de oportunidad. The flavor of hope, the scent of opportunity.”

“Women’s lives fall like saints and devils onto the backs of their daughters.”

“This is what Maine is,” I said. “The sky, the ocean. Wildflowers and black fir and spruce, and rocks and gulls and always the smell of pine and salt in your nose. Nothing else really matters; everything else is just. . .tacked on. Just noise.”