Annie Proulx Quotes & Sayings

I play the fiddle ... I'm not much to listen to yet, but we got no mice in our house. — Annie Proulx

And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets. — Annie Proulx

James said, "Who are these lawless men who cut your - our - timber?" "Every man!" Edward said angrily, spit flying. "They are mostly small, mean men seeking to make some money. But there are so many of them. They are often savage hungry fellows who stop at nothing. They fight the owners until blood flows and heads are cracked. Even when we catch and prosecute them, they and their friends slip back at night and continue cutting. Settlers, failed businessmen, shingle makers and clapboard sawyers, those are the thieves. And moonlight nights see many good pines fall. — Annie Proulx

For Archie was an expert in dividing the affairs of life into men's business and women's business. An empty cupboard and a full plate were the man's business, a full cupboard and an empty plate the concern of the woman. — Annie Proulx

A bald eagle perched in a dead tree, watching us. The landscape was bold. Not only was the property on the North Platte River but the river ran through it, taking an east-west turn for a few miles in its course. The land was a section, 640 acres, a square mile of riparian shrubs and cottonwood, some wetland areas during June high water, sage flats and a lot of weedy overgrazed pasture (46). — Annie Proulx

All them things I don't know could get you killed if I come to know them — Annie Proulx

The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. — Annie Proulx

Their silence comfortable. Something unfolding. But what? Not love, which wrenched and wounded. Not love, which came only once. — Annie Proulx

Anyway, there's something wrong with everybody and it's up to you to know what you can handle. — Annie Proulx

By January it had always been winter. — Annie Proulx

What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one. — Annie Proulx

Quoyle remembered purple-brown seckle pears the size and shape of figs, his father taking the meat off with pecking bites, the smell of fruit in their house, litter of cores and peels in the ashtrays, the grape cluster skeletons, peach stones like hens' brains on the windowsill, the glove of banana peel on the car dashboard. In the sawdust on the basement workbench galaxies of seeds and pits, cherry stones, long white date pits like spaceships ... The hollowed grapefruit skullcaps, cracked globes of tangerine peel. — Annie Proulx

These homes of love we build, house many rooms, sanded and painted in the shades and colours of our life, furnished with those moments that, however inconsequential they may seem to others, have in fact, defined us. — Annie Proulx

She noticed a monger's window where, on a bed of ice, a wonderful scene was worked in fish. A skiff made of flounder fillets rode waves of shrimp and blue-black mussels. A whole salmon was a lighthouse, shot out rays of glittering mackerel. All framed by a border of crab claws. She — Annie Proulx

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place. — Annie Proulx

He had a feel for silence, for leading to an unsounded note the listener yearned for ... — Annie Proulx

If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he
had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it. — Annie Proulx

Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one? — Annie Proulx

It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, world view and thoughts. — Annie Proulx

He had wanted to be a sophomore. — Annie Proulx

Wet, wet, the interior of the island, they said, bog and marsh, rivers and chains of ponds alive with metal-throated birds. The ships scraped on around the points. And the lookout saw shapes of caribou folding into fog. — Annie Proulx

They say that doing ten sums a day prevents you from becoming senile. But by that argument bankers should be geniuses. That's not right. Thickest heads in the world. — Annie Proulx

What do you think,' she said. Her voice was rapid. 'You want to
marry me, don't you? Don't you think you want to marry me?' Waited for
the wisecrack. As she spoke she changed in some provocative way,
seemed suddenly drenched in eroticism as a diver rising out of a pool
gleams like chrome with a sheet of unbroken water for a fractional
second. — Annie Proulx

I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience. — Annie Proulx

If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit Awards. — Annie Proulx

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. — Annie Proulx

The forest had many edges, like a lace altarpiece. — Annie Proulx

All the travelin I ever done is going around the coffeepot looking for the handle. — Annie Proulx

It takes a year, nephew ... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone. — Annie Proulx

Secretly he was pleased to own a horse with the sand to eat a raw cowboy. — Annie Proulx

Warren made bursting noises under the bed. A rancorous stench. Dog Farts Fell Family of Four. — Annie Proulx

Three or four days later he was still thinking about seal flipper pie. Remembered the two raw eggs Petal gave him. That he invested with pathetic meaning.
'Petal,' said Quoyle to Wavey, 'hated to cook. Hardly ever did.' Thought of the times he had fixed dinner for her, set put his stupid candles, folded the napkins as though they were important, waited and finally ate alone, the radio on for company. And later dined with the children, shoveling in canned spaghetti, scraping baby food off small chins.
'Once she gave me two eggs. Raw eggs for a present.' He had made an omelet of them, hand-fed her as thought she were a nestling bird. And saved the shells in a paper cup on top of the kitchen cabinet. Where they still must be. — Annie Proulx

The long horizon, the lunging, clotted sea like a swinging door opening, closing, opening. — Annie Proulx

You got to think a musical instrument is human or, anyway, alive ... You take a fiddle now, we say it has a neck, and in the human neck what do you find? Vocal cords like strings, where the sound comes from. — Annie Proulx

You all know we are only passing by. We only walk over these stones a few times, our boats float a little while and then they have to sink. The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her. — Annie Proulx

Place. Less than 1 percent of the area is managed for wildlife habitat protection. Where early travelers saw sharp-tailed grouse, bison, bighorn sheep, grizzly bears, numerous beaver and even wolverines, today they see dust, feral horses, and noxious weeds including cheatgrass, halogeton and Russian thistle. — Annie Proulx

Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything
cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks
press inexorably on and on. — Annie Proulx

Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton ... — Annie Proulx

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write. — Annie Proulx

The huge sadness of the northern plains rolled down on him
and
There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe,but nothing could be done about it,and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.
Close Range, Brokeback Mountain and other stories. — Annie Proulx

I would rather be dead than not read — Annie Proulx

Then, at a meeting, Petal Bear. Thin, moist, hot. Winked at him ... Grey eyes close together, curly hair the color of oak. The fluorescent light made her as pale as candle wax. Her eyelids gleamed with some dusky unguent. A metallic thread in her rose sweater. These faint sparks cast a shimmer on her like a spill of light. She smiled, the pearl-tinted lips wet with cider ... As she spoke she changed in some provocative way, seemed suddenly drenched in eroticism as a diver rising out of a pool gleams like chrome with a sheet of unbroken water for a fractional moment. — Annie Proulx

In every life there are events that reshape one's sense of existence. Afterward, all is different and the past is dimmed. — Annie Proulx

The old forests are going and once they are gone we will have to wait a thousand years or more to see their like. Though nothing will be allowed such a generous measure of time to grow. — Annie Proulx

For Quoyle was a failure at loneliness, yearned to be gregarious, to know his company was a pleasure to others. — Annie Proulx

Are you like an enchanted thing? A damn story where some girl lets a warty old toad sleep in her shoe and in the mornin the toad's a good-lookin dude makin omelettes? — Annie Proulx

Billy stretched and yawned, his withered neck taut again for a few seconds. "I can feel the season changing," he said. "Drawing in. This weather change coming means the end of hot weather. Time I got out to Gaze Island and worked on me poor old father's grave. Put it off last year and the year before." Some sadness straining the words. Billy seemed stored in an envelope; the flap sometimes lifted, his flattened self sliding onto the table. — Annie Proulx

I am influenced by words and the chewiness of language — Annie Proulx

The world is a staircase," hissed the accordion maker in the darkness. "Some go up and some come down. We must ascend. — Annie Proulx

The devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation. His middle name was X. Face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork. — Annie Proulx

A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction. — Annie Proulx

Especially since I don't want that vinyl stuff outside. 'Oh,' he says, 'that vinyl siding makes a warm house, never has to be painted, you can buy it on time.' I said I wouldn't have it on my coffin." She — Annie Proulx

The tide was still on the ebb in that complex swell and fall of water against land, as though a great heart in the centre of the earth beat but twice a day. — Annie Proulx

The windows of his house shone in the darkness like squares of melting butter. — Annie Proulx

No wonder, he thought, that the panhandle people were a godly lot, for they lived in sudden, violent atmospheres. Weather kept them humble.
... it was real muggy earlier, hot enough to cook a bear. Anyway, you get used a rapid weather change. — Annie Proulx

He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands. — Annie Proulx

In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter. — Annie Proulx

You've got a chance to start out all over again. A new place, new people, new sights. A clean slate. See, you can be anything you want with a fresh start. — Annie Proulx

The room stank of semen and smoke and sweat and whiskey, of old carpet and sour hay, saddle leather, shit and cheap soap. — Annie Proulx

The thing American people fear about corporations is that they might achieve too much power. We have an antipathy to power even as we admire it. — Annie Proulx

Quoyle experienced moments in all colors, uttered brilliancies, paid attention to the rich sound of waves counting stones, he laughed and wept, noticed sunsets, heard music in rain, said I do. — Annie Proulx

The mountain pine beetle is a tiny creature that chews through a lodgepole's bark, gouges out a hollow in the wood and lays its eggs. The larvae hatch hungry and feed on the cambium layer, a tree's most vital part, the annual layer of cells that makes up a growth ring. To prevent drowning in the tree's sap, the beetle larvae can eject a choking fungus that not only halts the life-giving flow of sap, but stains the wood a grey-blue color. — Annie Proulx

All must pay the debt of nature. — Annie Proulx

Kuntaw died on the most beautiful day in a thousand years. The October air was sweet and every faint breath a pleasure. Wind stirred and he said, "Our wind reaching me here." A small cloud formed in the west. "Our small cloud coming to me." The hours passed and the small cloud formed a dark wall and approached. A drop fell, another, many, and Kuntaw said, "Our rain wetting my face." His people came near him, drawing him into their eyes, and he said, "Now . . . what . . ." The sun came out, the brilliant world sparkled, susurration, liquid flow, stems of striped grass what was it what was it the limber swish of a released branch. What, now what. Kuntaw opened his mouth, said nothing, and let the sunlight enter him. — Annie Proulx

I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story. — Annie Proulx

The only cities were of ice, bergs with cores of beryl, blue gems within white gems, that some said gave off an odor of almonds. — Annie Proulx

I rarely use the Internet for research, as I find the process cumbersome and detestable. The information gained is often untrustworthy and couched in execrable prose. It is unpleasant to sit in front of a twitching screen suffering assault by virus, power outage, sluggish searches, system crashes, the lack of direct human discourse, all in an atmosphere of scam and hustle. — Annie Proulx

Where are the reporters of yesteryear?' he muttered, 'the nail biting, acerbic, alcoholic nighthawk bastards who truly knew how to write? — Annie Proulx

We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things. — Annie Proulx

Alkaline water tastes dreadful and was the scourge of covered wagon parties crossing Wyoming for neither men nor beasts could drink it for fear of blistering their tonsils and suffering agonizing stomach cramps. — Annie Proulx

We don't make the decisions, just does what we're told where and when we're told. We lives by rules made somewhere else by sons a bitches don't know nothin' about this place. — Annie Proulx

The past bubbled out of his black mouth. — Annie Proulx

Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in and he saw Jack get out of the truck, beat up Resistol tilted back. A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling the door closed behind him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jack's big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis's straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other's toes until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and his daughters, little darlin. — Annie Proulx

As it did go. They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, "I'm not no queer," and Jack jumped in with "Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours. — Annie Proulx

And so my father changed his name to William Pretty and here he grew up and led an independent life. And if it was not happy, he didn't know it. — Annie Proulx

Jack, in his dark camp, saw Ennis as night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain. — Annie Proulx

You know, friend, this is a goddamn bitch of a unsatisfactory situation. — Annie Proulx

You know, the Chinese have forgotten more about sailing than the rest of the world ever knew. — Annie Proulx

He felt he was a pin in the hinge of power. Saw the commonplaces of life as newspaper headlines. Man Walks Across Parking Lot at Moderate Pace. Women Talk of Rain. Phone Rings in Empty Room. — Annie Proulx

I know something now I didn't know a year ago," said Quoyle. "Petal wasn't any good. And I think maybe that is why I loved her."
"Yes," said Wavey. "Same with Herold. It's like you feel to yourself that's all you deserve. And the worse it gets the more it seems true, that you got it coming to you or it wouldn't be that way. You know what I mean? — Annie Proulx

Inside Duquet something like a tightly closed pine cone licked by fire opened abruptly and he exploded with incensed and uncontrollable fury, a life's pent-up rage. 'No one helped me,' he shrieked, 'I did everything myself. I endured. I contended with powerful men. I suffered in the wilderness. I accepted the risk I might die. No one helped me!' The boy's gaze shifted, the fever-boiled eyes following Duquet's rising arm closing only when the tomahawk split his brain. — Annie Proulx

Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore. — Annie Proulx

And I think that's important, to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself. — Annie Proulx

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country
indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky
provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut ...
... Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that. — Annie Proulx

You are a knowledgeable girl," he said, "and a damn good-lookin one, though upholstered. Care for a beer? — Annie Proulx

December brought stone-silent days though a fresh odor came from the heavy sky, the smell of cold purity that was the essence of the boreal forest. So — Annie Proulx

Here's Doc Osborne, first Democratic governor. A lynch mob hung Big Nose George Parrott back in the 1870s. Doc got the body, skinned it, tanned the hide, made himself a medical bag and a pair a shoes. Wore the shoes to his inauguration. They don't make Democrats like that anymore. — Annie Proulx

That old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong .. — Annie Proulx

There are four women in every man's heart. The Maid in the Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman. — Annie Proulx

Again the ranch is on the market and they've shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner saying, 'Give them to the real estate shark, I'm out a here," dropping the keys in Ennis's hand. He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream. — Annie Proulx

if you can't fix it you got a stand it. — Annie Proulx

You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you. — Annie Proulx

There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering. — Annie Proulx

Oh, he was ever a leading spirit in controversies," Bernard said. "I well remember his sentiments. He believed that men, when confronted with a vast plenitude of anything, feel an irresistible urge to take it all, then to smash and destroy what they cannot use." (4th Estate, London, 2016, p. 211.) — Annie Proulx

Strikes, eases, dies, leaves a temporary silence. — Annie Proulx

Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. — Annie Proulx

But the only rhyme he could summon for 'out' was 'sauerkraut,' which lacked poetic glory. He let it go. The right line would come in time. That was the thing about poetry. It crept up through the draws and coulees of the brain. — Annie Proulx

What we fear we often rage against. — Annie Proulx

Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading. — Annie Proulx

A kind of joyous hysteria moved into the room, everything flying before the wind, vehicles outside getting dented to hell, the crowd sweaty and the smells of aftershave, manure, clothes dried on the line, your money's worth of perfume, smoke, booze; the music subdued by the shout and babble through the bass hammer could be felt through the soles of the feet, shooting up the channels of legs to the body fork, center of everything. It is the kind of Saturday night that torches your life for a few hours, makes it seem like something is happening. — Annie Proulx