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Quote by Karen A. Wyle

“Joshua took a gulp of his own brew. “Need I have some other cause, when this plague could devastate so many of my patients and neighbors? When, if some of the reports prove true, we might see the town reduced painfully in size, as farmers abandon their holdings and flee to the East?” If the thought of one particular family leaving town, of Clara Brook’s tall figure climbing aboard a wagon and vanishing beyond the horizon, gave him a peculiar twinge, he was hardly obliged to say so.”

Quote by Karen A. Wyle

Book:What Heals the Heart
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What Heals the Heart

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Karen A. Wyle

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“...perhaps the Great American Desert's importance to the Western genre derives from the nineteenth-century view of the arid West as the natural refuge of Indians and, by extension, of all outlaws. The agrarian ideal, with its roots in Rousseau's thought, defined civilisation as arising from the agricultural life, so the migratory Indians - often compared in nineteent-century writings to Tartars and Bedouin - were, by reason of their socioeconomic organisation, outside the pale of civilised society and the area in which they moved was regarded as fit only for outlaws. It is as a milieu within which men outside civilised, agrarian society resolve their tensions, both personal and social, that the Western has used the myth of the Great American Desert, as in Riders of Death Valley (Forde Beebe and Ray Taylor, 1941), The Last Wagon (Delmer Daves, 1956), The Law and Jake Wade (John Sturges, 1958) and the Boetticher cycle.”

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“It may not be fair that people make judgments so quickly, usually within a few seconds of observation, but it's unrealistic to expect that they won't. So, if you want to be judged in a certain manner, be sure that your look and demeanor give that impression.”

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