Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Quotes & Sayings

You can't change a man, no-ways. By the time his mummy turns him loose and he takes up with some innocent woman and marries her, he's what he is. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The best fish in the world are of course those one catches oneself. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Well, son, you cain't go thru life chunkin' things at all the ugly women you meet. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Eulalie in a remote fashion belonged to him, Jody, to do with as he pleased, if only to throw potatoes at her. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Good God, with a bounty
Look down on Marion County,
For the soil is so pore, and so awful rooty, too,
I don't know what to God the pore folks gonna do. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Hit don't make no difference what a man perfesses. I been in a heap o' churches. There's the Nazarene Church and the Pentecost and the Holy Rollers and the Baptists and I don't know what-all. I cain't see much difference to nary one of 'em. There's a good to all of 'em and there's a bad. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

She drew gallantry from men as the sun drew water. Her pertness enchanted them. Young men went away from her with a feeling of bravado. Old men were enslaved by her silver curls. Something about her was forever female and made all men virile. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

No, I most certainly do not think advertising people are wonderful. I think they are horrible, and the worst menace to mankind, next to war; perhaps ahead of war. They stand for the material viewpoint, for the importance of possessions, of desire, of envy, of greed. And war comes from these things. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Some of the books that provided the richest fare were hidden under unrevealing names, like a rare soul behind a drab face — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Men had reached into the scrub and along its boundaries, had snatched what they could get and had gone away, uneasy in that vast indifferent peace; for a man was nothing, crawling ant-like among the myrtle bushes under the pines. Now they were gone, it was as though they had never been. The silence of the scrub was primordial. The wood-thrush crying across it might have been the first bird in the world - or the last. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Garlic, like perfume, must be used with discretion and on the proper occasions. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Readers themselves, I think, contribute to a book. They add their own imaginations, and it is as though the writer only gave them something to work on, and they did the rest. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I see no reason for denying so fundamental an urge, ruin or no. It is more important to live the life one wishes to live, and to go down with it if necessary, quite contentedly, than to live more profitably but less happily. Yet to achieve content under sometimes adverse circumstances, requires first an adjustment within oneself, and this I had already made, and after that, a recognition that one is not unique in being obliged to toil and struggle and suffer. This is the simplest of all facts and the most difficult for the individual ego to accept. As I look back on those first difficult times at the Creek, when it seemed as though the actual labor was more than I could bear, and the making of a living on the grove impossible, it was old black Martha who drew aside a curtain and led me in to the company of all those who had loved the Creek and been tormented by it. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The test of beauty is whether it can survive close knowledge. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He lay down on his pallet and drew the fawn down beside him. He often lay so with it in the shed, or under the live oaks in the heat of the day. He lay with his head against its side. its ribs lifted and fell with its breathing. It rested its chin on his hand. It had a few short hairs there that prickled him. He had been cudgeling his wits for an excuse to bring the fawn inside at night to sleep with him, and now he had one that could not be disputed. He would smuggle it in and out as long as possible, in the name of peace. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It occurred to him that the increasing patience of age was as great a myth as the unalloyed joy of youth. The longer he lived, the less tolerance he had for the patently evil. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used, but not owned ... We are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The individual man is transitory, but the pulse of life and of growth goes on after he is gone, buried under a wreath of magnolia leaves. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages..It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed, but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its sesonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers, and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time ...
— Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

You kin tame arything, son, excusin' the human tongue. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He wrote:
Dear ollever; yor ol twinkk has dun gode up the rivver. im gladd. yor friend jody. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He who tries to forget a woman, never loved her — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I'll walk off the rest of my mad. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Magic birds were dancing in the mystic marsh. The grass swayed with them, and the shallow waters, and the earth fluttered under them. The earth was dancing with the cranes, and the low sun, and the wind and sky. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Lives are only one with living. How dare we, in our egos, claim catastrophe in the rise and fall of the individual entity? There is only Life, and we are beads strung on its strong and endless thread. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I can only tell you that when long soul-searching and a combination of circumstances delivered me of my last prejudices, there was an exalted sense of liberation. It was not the Negro who became free, but I. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He watched the sun rise beyond the grape arbor. In the thin golden light the young leaves and tendrils of the Scuppernong were like Twink Weatherby's hair. He decided that sunrise and sunset both gave him a pleasantly sad feeling. The sunrise brought a wild, free sadness; the sunset, a lonely yet a comforting one. He indulged his agreeable melancholy until the earth under him turned from gray to lavender and then to the color dried corn husks. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He lay down beside the fawn. He put one arm across its neck. It did not seem to him that he could ever be lonely again. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

A pie so delicate, so luscious, that I hope to be propped up on my dying bed and fed a generous portion. Then I think that I should refuse outright to die, for life would be too good to relinquish. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity and we are all individualists here. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Personal publicity is apt to be dangerous to any writer's integrity; for the moment he begins to fancy himself as quite a person, a taint creeps into his work. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Food imaginatively and lovingly prepared, and eaten in good company, warms the being with something more than the mere intake of calories. I cannot conceive of cooking for friends or family, under reasonable conditions, as being a chore. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

We need above all, I think, a certain remoteness from urban confusion. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It is not that death comes, but that life leaves. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The inferred is always more effective than the obvious. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Grandma Hutto's flower garden was a bright patchwork quilt thrown down inside the pickets. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

A part of the placidity of the South comes from the sense of well-being that follows the heart-and-body-warming consumption of breads fresh from the oven. We serve cold baker's bread to our enemies, trusting that they will never impose on our hospitality again. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

At one time or another most of us at the Creek have been suspected of a degree of madness. Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity ... — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I had done battle with a great fear and the victory was mine. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Good" is what helps us or at least does not hinder. "Evil" is whatever harms us or interferes with us, according to our own selfish standards. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I have found that each of my books has developed out of something I have written in a previous book. Some thought evidently unfinished. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'taint easy.

--Penny Baxter to his son, Jody — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

They listened with flattering attention. He was filled with enthusiasm. He began at the beginning and tried to tell it as he thought Penny would do. Half-way through, he looked down at the cake. He lost interest in the account.
"Then Pa shot him," he ended abruptly. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Fear is the most easily taught of all lessons, and the fight against terror, real or imagined, is perhaps the history of man's mind. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It is impossible to be among the woods animals on their own ground without a feeling of expanding one's own world, as when any foreign country is visited. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I'm eating' it quick ... but I'll remember it a long time. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Writing is agony for me. I work at it eight hours every day, hoping to get six pages, but I am satisfied with three. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

You know what I wisht I had, Ma? A pouch like a 'possum, to tote things.
The Yearling — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

A man'll seem like a person to a woman, year in, year out. She'll put up and she'll put up. Then one day he'll do something maybe no worse than what he's been a-doing all his life. She'll look at him. And without no warning he'll look like a varmint. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

You do somethin' for me? Go tell Twink I'll meet her at the old grove Tuesday about dusk-dark."
Jody was frozen.
He burst out, "I won't do it. I hate her. Ol' yellow-headed somethin'. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It had been so brief a sojourn, not even a full century. He had been a guest in a mansion and he was not ungrateful. He was at once exhausted and refreshed. His stay was ended. Now he must gather up the shabby impedimenta of his mind and body and be on his way again. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Here in Florida the seasons move in and out like nuns in soft clothing, making no rustle in their passing. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

We cannot live without the Earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

To comfort any mortal against loneliness, one other is enough. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He could understand that the creatures, the fish and the owls, should feed and frolic at moon-rise, at moon-down and at south-moon-over, for these were all plain marks to go by, direct and visible. He marvelled, padding on bare feet past the slat-fence of the clearing, that the moon was so strong that when it lay the other side of the earth, the creatures felt it and stirred by the hour it struck. The moon was far away, unseen, and it had power to move them. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Sift each of us through the great sieve of circumstance and you have a residue, great or small as the case may be, that is the man or the woman. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He was addled with April. He was dizzy with Spring. He was as drunk as Lem Forrester on a Saturday night. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Living was no longer the grief behind him, but the anxiety ahead. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

No case of libel by a negro against a white would even reach a southern court. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks ... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life ... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.
- Penny Baxter — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Yet it was . . . Asahel who knew those books secretly by heart, and read, as laboriously as he did everything else, any scrap of paper with printing on it, poring hungrily over the magic of words. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Information can be passed from one to another, like a silver dollar. There's absolutely no wisdom except what you learn for yourself. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Life is strong stuff, some of us can bear more of it than others. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Jody said, "Ma, you're shore good."
"Oh, yes. When it's rations."
"Well, I'd a heap ruther you was good about rations and mean about other things."
"Oh, I be mean, be I?"
"Only about jest a very few things," he soothed her. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The worst things I knows of is rattlesnakes and some kinds o' people. And a rattlesnake minds his own matters if he ain't bothered. A man's got a right to kill ary thing, snake or man, comes messin' up with him. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He edged closer to his father's bones and sinews. Penny slipped an arm around him and he lay close against the lank thigh. His father was the core of safety. His father swam the swift creek to fetch back his wounded dog. The clearing was safe, and his father fought for it, and for his own. A sense of snugness came over him and he dropped asleep. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It's very important to be just to other people. It takes years and years of living to learn that injustice against oneself is always unimportant. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

She lives a sophisticate's life among worldly people. At the slightest excuse she steps out of civilization, naked and relieved, as I should step out of a soiled chemise. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

No man should have proprietary rights over land who does not use that land wisely and lovingly. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

A dead tree, falling, made less havoc than a live one. It seemed as though a live tree went down fighting, like an animal. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Words began fights and words ended them. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

When a wave of love takes over a human being ... such an exaltation takes him that he knows he has put his finger on the pulse of the great secret and the great answer. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The truth is artistically fallacious. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Now, having left cities behind me, turned
Away forever from the strange, gregarious
Huddling of men by stones, I find those various
Great towns I knew fused into one, burned
Together in the fire of my despising ... — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

A woman never forgets the men she could have had; a man, the women he couldn't — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Ma Baxter rocked complacently. They were all pleased whenever she made a joke. Her good nature made the same difference in the house as the hearth-fire had made in the chill of the evening. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The wild animals seemed less predatory to him than people he had known. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Don't go gittin faintified on me. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

People in general are totally unable to detach the personality of a writer from the products of his thinking. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Two elements enter into successful and happy gatherings at table. The food, whether simple or elaborate, must be carefully prepared; willingly prepared; imaginatively prepared. And the guests - friends, family or strangers - must be conscious of their welcome. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Life is a difficult matter, and the more a simple man may learn of what greater men have thought, and taught, have spoken and have written, the better can he cope with any sort of life. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

His father had never planted an orchard. No growing thing was graceless, but that scowling, snarling man, Hiram Linden, had seemed purposely to avoid all crops that flowered in beauty. All were utilitarian, sown with surliness and harvested with oaths. Ase was the first Linden of three generations to consider the earth and its bounty with reverence and affection, to long to adorn it as best he might during his tenure. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

But to make the intangible tangible, to pick the emotion out of the air and make it true for others, is both the blessing and the curse of the writer, for the thing between book covers is never as beautiful as the thing he imagined. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

They were all too tightly bound together, men and women, creatures wild and tame, flowers, fruits and leaves, to ask that any one be spared. As long as the whole continued, the earth could go about its business. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It seemed a strange thing to him, when earth was earth and rain was rain, that scrawny pines should grow in the scrub, while by every branch and lake and river there grew magnolias. Dogs were the same everywhere, and oxen and mules and horses. But trees were different in different places. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Hemingway, damn his soul, makes everything he writes terrifically exciting (and incidentally makes all us second-raters seem positively adolescent) by the seemingly simple expedient of the iceberg principle - three-fourths of the substance under the surface. He comes closer that way to retaining the magic of the original, unexpressed idea or emotion, which is always more stirring than any words. But just try and do it! — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Ants in the house seem to be, not intruders, but the owners. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It is not death that kills us, but life. We are done to death by life. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He set down the milk pails to rest and stared at the bright house. This was a man's great joy, to come at nightfall after his day's work to a lighted house. . . . and his beloved was waiting for him with food and warmth and comfort. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

This, then, was hunger. This was what his mother had meant when she had said, "We'll all go hongry." He had laughed, for he had thought he had known hunger, and it was faintly pleasant. He knew now that it had been only appetite. This was another thing. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Perhaps all men were moved against their will. A man ordered his life, and then an obscurity of circumstance sent him down a road that was not of his own desire or choosing. Something beyond a man's immediate choice and will reached through the earth and stirred him. He did not see how any man might escape it. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

She was not unattractive until she focused her eyes on a human being, when their unblinking coldness gave the effect of the stare of an adder. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

It is my conviction that the personality of the writer has nothing to do with the literate product of his mind. And publicity in this case embarrasses me because I am acutely conscious of how far short the book falls of the artistry I am struggling to achieve. It's like being caught half-dressed. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings