3 Quotes Tagged: mailer

In the South of Spain, one could look to vice as quickly as to virtue for a sense of tradition.

"I heard from clear across the city, over the Hudson in the Jersey yards, one fierce whistle of a locomotive which took me to a train late at night hurling through the middle of the West, its iron shriek blighting the darkness. One hundred years before, some first trains had torn through the prairie and their warning had congealed the nerve. "Beware," said the sound. "Freeze in your route. Behind this machine comes a century of maniacs and a heat which looks to consume the earth." What a rustling those first animals must have known."

Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way.
p.207