Quotes by Beck

“Morning seems to come earlier every year I live.”

“But it is only since I have ceased to live that I think of these things and the other things. It is in the tranquillity of decomposition that I remember the long confused emotion which was my life,...”

“At last he said, "Did you come out of the big mountains?"Gitano shook his head slowly. "No, I walked down the Salinas Valley."The afternoon thought would not let Joey go. "Did you ever go into the ...”

“Helen, you would just have to sit still, close your eyes and think of me, and I would turn the universe inside out to find you. I would go anywhere and fight anything to get to you—witches, dragons...”

“Now Pilon knew it for a perfect night. A high fog covered the sky, and behind it, the moon shone so so that the forest was filled with a gauze-like light. There was none of the sharp outline we thi...”

“I always found in myself a dread of west and love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back...”

“For how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.”

“It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by division.”

“A cat’s secrets run so deep that even the cat itself is often unaware. Their mysteries are as natural as whiskers.”

“I can’t seem to shake this perpetual awareness of being Molly.”

“While the churches, bringing the sweet smell of piety for the soul, came in prancing and farting like brewery horses in bock-beer time, the sister evangelism, with release and joy for the body, cre...”

“And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another.”

“And I seemed to see myself ageing as swiftly as a day-fly. But the idea of ageing was not exactly the one which offered itself to me. And what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied collapsing...”

“Look now—in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst sin we ...”

“All the things I’ve done to my body, I’ve done out of love.”

“Curiosity is the hair of our habit tending to stand on end. It rarely happens that our attention is not stained in greater or lesser degree by this animal element.”

“You keep out of my bed,” said Danny, for he knew that Joe Portagee had come to stay. The way he sat in a chair and crossed his knees had an appearance of permanence.”

“What branch do you want to go in?” “I don’ give a god-damn,” said Pilon jauntily. “I guess we need men like you in the infantry.” And Pilon was written so. He turned then to Big Joe, and the Portag...”

“I’ve watched you for a very long time now. And in this time, I’ve come to discover just as I first suspected. We are perfect for one another.”

“Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.”