Quotessence
Home / Authors / Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner Quotes

Historian

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleWritingThinkingKnowsWantWildernessNeedsWayWest

Famous Wallace Stegner Quotes

“A muddy little stream, a village grown unfamiliar with time and trees. I turn around and retrace my way up Main Street and park and have a Coke in the confectionery store. It is run by a Greek, as it used to be, but whether the same Greek or another I would not know. He does not recognize me, nor I him. Only the smell of his place is familiar, syrupy with old delights, as if the ghost of my first banana split had come close to breathe on me.”

IfsKnowsWayFirstsLittlesDoeRunningUsedTurnsTreeStreetsDelightSmellBreatheStoresGhostFamiliarUsed To BeMy WayGreekStreamsParksVillageSplitsBananasUnfamiliarCokeMuddyMain StreetBanana Splits
Book:Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier
Create image

“A western buckaroo, I share his scorn for people who go camping by the book, relying on the authority of some half-assed assistant scoutmaster whose total experience outdoors probably consists of two overnight hikes and a weekend in the Catskills. But we have just had that confrontation. The one who goes by Pritchard's book is Sid's wife, and I am wary. It is not my expedition. I am a guest here.”

PeopleTwoBookHalfWifeShareAuthorityWesternWeekendGuestsScornConfrontationAssistantsCampingExpeditionsSidsScoutmasters
Author:Wallace Stegner
Create image

“... I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others?”

IfsLifeDoeHas BeensRealityCenturyPerspectiveWallExerciseShadowPaintCastsCaughtObjectivesWhat IfSunlightRainbowEntityMultipleRemarksVanishingPrismsObjective RealityVanishing PointMultiple Perspectives
Book:The Spectator Bird
Create image