Quotessence
Home / Books / South of the Angels

South of the Angels

Book by Jessamyn West · 4 quotes · War, Bedridden, Beholden To No One

Filter quotes by topic

AllWarBedriddenBeholden To No OneBulletsCalendarsConsequences Of WarDestinyIsolationKatydidsNo ComfortOne S Own PlaceQuilt GazingQuiltsSenselessness Of WarStarsSummerTime PassingWaiting While IllWounds

South of the Angels Quotes

“He survived the singing. . .he survived the collection of money for the home guard, a flag drill and a speech. . .But he did not survive a recitation by a . . .child. When she reached the lines A man is dying in no-man's land, Before he goes, he asks for your hand. . . . Asa departed the rally. He was glad to escape, but he was no happier outside than he had been inside. He was not sure where the greater sickness lay, in himself, unable by love or war to feel himself united with his neighbors, or in his neighbors, united by the cause and in the manner they were. He looked up at the stars, winter's constellations setting in the west, summer's constellations marching up the eastern sky. They had the power to calm and ease, but to take that calm and ease on the first night of so many men's deaths seemed ignoble. Endure the pain, he told himself, star love is too easy. The stars ask nothing of you. He defended himself against his own abuse. "I ask a good deal of myself. What? In God's name, what? Tell me quickly," his suffering self demanded. "To know, to understand." It was a barren defense. He got no comfort out of it. He took what comfort he could get from the stars.”

WarStarsConsequences Of WarNo ComfortSenselessness Of War
Book:South of the Angels
Create image

“He had heard it said that some men are born for the sea, some for the mountains. And that they feel this destiny in their bones from the very beginning and fight their way toward their rightful places. All he had wanted was his own place, his own land, a chance to make his own living and be beholden to no one. . . .He felt strangled, . .like a man held down by weeds under water who suddenly breaks free and rises to the surface. He breathed in the air like life itself, sweeter than any food or drink he had ever tasted. He held his hands out into it; he would like to gather up a fistful of it, do more than breathe it.”

DestinyBeholden To No OneOne S Own Place
Book:South of the Angels
Create image

“The Tract, which had been too busy fighting its own battles. . .to worry about Europe, was trying now in a single evening to anticipate wounds and bullets, losses and hatreds. In the moments in which they were able to do so, sudden silences, like a thickening of night's darkness, would settle upon the crowd. Though the air on the skin was as warm as summer, there was no summer for the ear, no summer sounds of katydids and locusts, cicadas and crickets. War had come overnight, but a real summer has to ripen. A war can be thought up, anyone can declare it, and death can be instant. But no amount of thought has ever produced a katydid, life cannot be declared, and summer takes a little time.”

WarSummerWoundsBulletsKatydids
Book:South of the Angels
Create image

“The calendar gave him unmoving pools of quiet in which to rest. He spent hours looking at the calendar. It was time past and time to come, divided into neat little boxes, and the boxes named and numbered. He would look at a box ahead, say, February 25, 1917, and think, Inside that box, I and everyone else on earth, minus a few who will die before then and plus a few who will be born, will have our lives. Inside that box, each of my acts and feelings for that twenty-four hours awaits me. And because he was sick, there was not much he could do to prepare for or to control those acts which waited for him to become their center. . . . Most of the time, he was alone. He took deep breaths of the raw smell of seed potatoes, newly cut and bleeding their milky starch. He inhaled the sun-warmed scent of the creosote-stained redwood planks. The top quilt on his bed was pieced in a star design. Each star was made up of God knows how many pieces, and each piece was of a different color and design. The designs were a tanglewood maze of leaves and flowers and stars and branches. When he got tired of calendar quiet and of cataloging smells, he took up quilt-gazing. He didn't need a world a minute bigger than his room, an inch wider than his calendar, or an iota sweeter than his own breath. But he was the only one who knew this.”

IsolationCalendarsTime PassingQuiltsBedriddenQuilt GazingWaiting While Ill
Book:South of the Angels
Create image