Kittredge Quotes & Sayings

This Bible, then, has a mission, grander than any mere creation of God; for in this volume are infinite wisdom, and infinite love. Between its covers are the mind and heart of God; and they are for man's good, for his salvation, his guidance, his spiritual nourishment. If now I neglect my Bible, I do my soul a wrong; for the fact of this Divine message is evidence that I need it. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

What I wanted was some dreamlike Frank Lloyd Wright bungalow where we could sit on the veranda forever and it would always be twilight in the temperate zones, in the most beautiful house. — William Kittredge

It wasn't even a dream, because dreams come from a person's brain and I knew deep down that this one came directly from my madness. — Caitlin Kittredge

I am alone. Alone except for the sirens, alone except for the burning, empty city on the edge of a rotting, pollutedriver green with algae, host to rubber-skinned, gibbous-eyed things with mouths large enough to swallow me whole andprotruding stomachs ready to digest me. — Caitlin Kittredge

To attract boyfriends, American girls pretend they are women, while Japanese women pretend they are girls. — Kittredge Cherry

You're a monster that mothers threaten children with and you're still touchy as an ugly girl in a pretty dress. — Caitlin Kittredge

A miracle is a supernatural event, whose antecedent forces are beyond our finite vision, whose design is the display of almighty power for the accomplishment of almighty purposes, and whose immediate result, as regards man, is his recognition of God as the Supreme Ruler of all things, and of His will as the only supreme law. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

How do you go to your own house when something has gone bad on the inside, when it doesn't seem like your place to live anymore, when you almost cannot recall living there although it was the place you mostly ate and slept for all your grown-up life? Try to remember two or three things about living there. Try to remember cooking one meal. — William Kittredge

My parents managed a summer camp, and it was vacant for about seven or eight months out of the year. It was in the middle of nowhere in the woods. We backed up to a state forest. So absolutely, there were creepy woods all around the house. It was easy to get lost. It was really spooky. — Caitlin Kittredge

This bread and wine are the simple but eloquent monument to the infinite love of the Son of God, around which we gather with tender, tearful gratitude, because He loved us'so, and because we know that our garlands of affection and consecration are pleasing to Him. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

Like the college professor he was, Kittredge groped only for big words, and, finding no apt ones, he coined a lot of untranslatable new ones. — Kurt Vonnegut

To multitudes of sufferers on beds of pain and languishing, Jesus has been the great physician to-day; in many a weeping circle around precious dust, He has been the Divine comforter, and the tears have almost ceased to flow as this Jesus has touched the bier. Dying lips have whispered His name, and the valley of the shadow has been illumined as with the glory from the celestial shores. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

He's no kind of gentleman.
That's all right. I'm no kind of lady. — Caitlin Kittredge

'Kit Kittredge' was an amazing experience because I got to go to Canada, and it was my first 'era' film, so I got to wear the 1930s clothes, the real vintage clothes. — Madison Davenport

Up there on Huckleberry Mountain, I couldn't sleep ... As the sky broke light over the peaks of Glacier, I found myself deeply moved by the view from our elevation - off west the lights of Montana, Hungry Horse, and Columbia Falls, and farmsteads along the northern edge of Flathead Lake, and back in the direction of sunrise the soft and misted valleys of the parklands, not an electric light showing: little enough to preserve for the wanderings of a great and sacred animal who can teach us, if nothing else, by his power and his dilemma, a little common humility. — William Kittredge

We live in stories. What we are is stories. We do things because of what is called character, and our character is formed by the stories we learn to live in. — William Kittredge

Considering it was my father's house, I thought it was very much my beeswax, but I wasn't about to argue with a stranger hiding in a kitchen, pelting me with footwear. — Caitlin Kittredge

A touch of truth makes a lie worth believing. — Caitlin Kittredge

Sometimes, there was no getting over it. Sometimes, you lived with the empty place inside of you until you imploded on it, loss as singularity, or until the empty place expanded and hollowed out the rest of you so thoroughly you became the walking dead, a ghost in your own life. — Caitlin Kittredge

I don't care about lasting. I just want right now. — Caitlin Kittredge

Working with civilians, like this was that TV show about the wizard with the talking skull and the twatty name. — Caitlin Kittredge

I breathed in for a moment, letting his scent of leather and cigarettes and boy calm my ragged breathing. — Caitlin Kittredge

Pain was tertiary. I could feel it later, for any length of time it desired. — Caitlin Kittredge

Brothers didn't make life easier, not even the jinxed sort of life we'd found ourselves in, I decided. They were tailored by evolution to be annoying. — Caitlin Kittredge

We must define a story which encourages us to make use of the place where we live without killing it, and we must understand that the living world cannot be replicated. There will never be another setup like the one in which we thrived. Ruin it and we will have lost ourselves, and that is craziness. — William Kittredge

Places come to exist in our imaginations because of stories, and so do we. When we reach for a "sense of place," we posit an intimate relationship to a set of stories connected to a particular location, such as Hong Kong or the Grand Canyon or the bed where we were born, thinking of histories and the evolution of personalities in a local context. Having "a sense of self" means possessing a set of stories about who we are and with whom and why. — William Kittredge

I've got lots and lots planned out, and other ideas knocking around in my head, too. I'm kind of an obsessive pre-planner, so I have a lot of material. — Caitlin Kittredge

In a platonic and boring fashion, is it all right if I share your fire until me clothes dry out? I have a feeling if I fall asleep damp I'll wake up with some horrid Victorian disease. — Caitlin Kittredge

When [Japanese] women encouraged men to bask in public glory, it reminded me of the way you would indulge a child with a sweet-bean treat. — Kittredge Cherry

I was reading about all of these medical and psychological experimental programs that the government and various intelligence agencies had run throughout the 20th century. Any book you can read on that, there's some really horrifying and fascinating stuff that goes on there. — Caitlin Kittredge

Writing is a funny business. You sit in your room and listen to voices and write everything down. What kind of a profession is that? — William Kittredge

A man ... needs to get out in the open air and sweat and blow off the stink. — William Kittredge

Oh! for this baptism of fire! when every spoken word for Jesus shall be a thunderbolt, and every prayer shall bring forth a mighty flood. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

Crows don't take from you," Dean said. "They give your soul wings. — Caitlin Kittredge

When a court officer suggested quarantine for Nerissa, she grabbed the man's pen and jammed it into the back of his hand, screaming that he was a Crimson Guard witch come to remove her memories and replace them with bird-song.
They decided to skip quarantine after that. — Caitlin Kittredge

Jesus lives! the same comforting, helping, instructing, loving Elder Brother, as when John leaned on His bosom, as when He lifted Peter up from the waves, as when He dried Mary's tears with His, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." Jesus lives! the same almighty Saviour, Guide, Intercessor, as when He ascended to glory with the broken fetters of sin and death in His pierced hands. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

In learning to pay respectful attention to one another and plants and animals, we relearn the acts of empathy, and thus humility and compassion - ways of proceeding that grow more and more necessary as the world crowds in. — William Kittredge

I never hear parents exclaim impatiently, "Children, you must no make so much noise," that I do not think how soon the time may come when, beside the vacant seat, those parents would give all the world, could they hear once more the ringing laughter which once so disturbed them. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

I've been a big fan of Joe Hill ever since his first novel, 'Heart-Shaped Box.' — Caitlin Kittredge

A lot of times with novels, you can get a really deep, engaging story, but there's not a lot happening, frankly. Those books tend to be super-literary and dense, and they require a lot of commitment, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you want fast-moving action and gore and plot and excitement, you can get shorted on that. — Caitlin Kittredge

A Christian home! What a power it is to the child when he is far away in the cold, tempting world, and voices of sin are filling his ears, and his feet stand on slippery places. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

Regardless of the shape he took, Cal had a nearly endless capacity for worrywarting. — Caitlin Kittredge

You're in my blood like poison. And I'd die because of you. — Caitlin Kittredge

Something breaks under my boot, and I know before I look down what I'll see. Bones. Human skulls, femurs, ribs. The bones of otherthings as well, things that starved once the humans rotted away. Twisted spines, elongated jaws. Teeth. — Caitlin Kittredge

Now it is the blood of Jesus which saves, and it is the same blood which cleanses and sanctifies; and as we had to come lo Jesus to be plunged into the fountain, so we have to abide in Jesus by fellowship, to grow up into Christlikeness. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

...I wondered if I'd ever stop feeling fragile... — Caitlin Kittredge

It is our duty to preserve huge tracts of land in something resembling its native condition. The biological interactions necessary to insure the continuities of life are astonishingly complex, and cannot take place in islands of semiwilderness like the national parks. — William Kittredge

They knew bullshit, and they knew about the ruling class; dying for a ruling class cause was almost always bullshit. — William Kittredge

I believe that the fewer the laws in a home the better; but there is one law which should be as plainly understood as the shining of the sun is visible at noonday, and that is, implicit and instantaneous obedience from the child to the parent, not only for the peace of the home, but for the highest good of the child. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

One of finest evocations of life in Western America in recent memory ... Powerful and profoundly moving. — William Kittredge

I had discovered a terrible vulnerability I myself which I think of not as cowardliness but as an ability to imagine too much. — William Kittredge

In a story, nothing is real until it is acted upon. — William Kittredge

I suppose that every parent loves his child, but I know, without any suppossing, that in a large number of homes the love is hidden behind authority, or its expression is crowded out by daily duties and cares — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

You smell pretty tasty.
Just what every girl wants to hear. — Caitlin Kittredge

I'll be back before I have to meet the Headmaster about me going mad and killing people on my birthday, I swear. — Caitlin Kittredge

I've been on this kick reading about the beginning of forensic science: autopsies, fingerprinting, psychological profiling. I've been reading a lot of books about forensic anthropology. — Caitlin Kittredge

Mr. Darcy is a construct designed to make woman feel bad about the partners that they're capable of attracting versus the fantasized image he presents. — Caitlin Kittredge

I read a lot of detective novels. — Caitlin Kittredge

Kittredge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry. — Justin Cronin

The whole history of Israel, its ritual and its government, is explicable only as it is typical of the spiritual Israel, of the sacrifice on Calvary, of the precious blood which alone can wash away sin. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

The ecology of the valley was complex beyond our understanding, and it began to die as we went on manipulating it in ever more frantic ways. As it went dead and empty of the old life it became a place where no one wanted to live. In our right minds we want to seek out places that reek of complexity. Our drive to industrialize soured and undercut the intimacies that drew most people to country life in the first place. — William Kittredge

The specific danger is us; we are rampant; this earth is our only friend; we are destroying it increment by increment at a horrific rate. We must understand that we can't buy it back. — William Kittredge

You can't give up on me. If you give up, then I'm going to break into a million pieces.
I'm here. I'll give you everything I've got. — Caitlin Kittredge

Didn't know she was spoken for."
"You do now", Jack snarled. "And the next time you try to pass off your bloody Fae nectar on a human, I'll shove your little horned head up your arse and hold it there until you stop twitching. — Caitlin Kittredge

Our old pilgrims believed stories in which the West was a promise, a place where decent people could escape the wreckage of failed lives and start over. Come along, the dream whispers, and you can have another chance. We still listen to promises in the wind. This time, we think, we'll get it right. — William Kittredge

Christianity claims that the supernatural is as reasonable as the natural, that man himself is supernatural as truly as he is natural, and that the Bible is so clearly the word of God by proofs that are unanswerable, that it is unreasonable to disbelieve its divine truths. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

Impossible just means they ain't thought of a name for it yet ... — Caitlin Kittredge

Pete squeezed Jack's hand, hard as she could. "You're not alone," she told him. "If you've made up your mind to die, then I'll be with you here, until the end. I'd follow you into death if that's what you asked, Jack. Heaven, Hell. Anywhere at all. — Caitlin Kittredge

Sometimes there is no choice but to walk into your own house. Far away, you think, and you do not want to see. You come home and you say do not tell me. You say, I have hunted the elk all over the snowfields of the Selway, and I do not want to know what happened here. And then there is a morning you walk in and take a look in your own house, like any traveler. — William Kittredge

Dean flashed me a smile that promised rule-breaking and breathlessness. — Caitlin Kittredge

I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the Cross, the Cross
God's hammer, God's fire. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

There are seventeen madhouses in the city of Lovecraft. I've visited all of them. — Caitlin Kittredge

Word of advice, kid. This may be the Wild West down here, but you ain't a cowboy. You're not even a boy in a cowboy suit. — Caitlin Kittredge

I'm extremely superstitious. — Caitlin Kittredge

Dear friends, have you begun to sing the "new song? " Loved ones are singing it in the heavenly home, and we may sing it here; and by and by we shall join them, gaze with them on the risen, glorified Lord, and our voices will mingle in the "new song" "unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

Missoula has a culture uniquely its own, however, thanks to the fusion of its gritty frontier heritage with the university's myriad impacts. UM has nationally distinguished programs in biology and ecology and is perhaps even more renowned for its literary bona fides. The faculty of the university's Creative Writing Program, founded in 1920, has included such influential authors as Richard Hugo, James Crumley, and William Kittredge. — Jon Krakauer

I want to think I deserve what I get. I don't want to consider how vastly I am overly rewarded. I don't want to consider the injustices around me. I don't want any encounters with the disenfranchised. I want to say it's not my fault. But it is, it's yours and mine, and ours. We'd better figure out ways to spread some equity around if we want to go on living in a society that is at least semi-functional. It's a fundamental responsibility, to ourselves. — William Kittredge

As a matter of fact, with all his wit, humor, raillery, persiflage, he was the profoundest logician that ever appealed to the intellect of an American audience. There was logic even in his laughter. He passed the cup of mirth, and in its sparkling foam were found the gems of unanswerable truth.

{Kittredge on the great Robert Ingersoll} — Herman E. Kittredge

If you and I shall, like the believing shepherds, watch and long for His appearing, one day we, too, shall hear a music grander and sweeter even than the song of angels, when the great Composer shall transpose all the strains of earth from the minor into the major, when the wail of nature shall give way to the glad harmony of the everlasting jubilee. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

Don't worry about meaning. If a story's any good, it can't help but have meaning. Let the PhDs tell you what your story means. — William Kittredge

A love to Christ which is so cowardly and selfish that it is unwilling to proclaim by a public confession its faith in Him who hung before all the world crucified for sinners, is a love which is hardly worth the name. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

It is a skill we learn early, the art of inventing stories to explain away the fearful scared strangeness of the world. Storytelling and make-believe, like war and agriculture, are among the arts of self-defense, and all of them are ways of enclosing otherness and claiming ownership. — William Kittredge

We continually use stories to hold up as mirrors to ourselves. — William Kittredge

Do you know who I am, you sodding barn animal?" he hissed. The publican gurgled. "I'm Jack fucking Winter." Jack said, releasing him with a push that rattled clean glasses on the bar back. — Caitlin Kittredge

Fiction is life by design. — Mary Kittredge

Do you recall the laughter of the Philistines at the helpless Sampson? You can hear the echo of that laughter to-day, as the church, shorn of her strength by her own sin, is an object of ridicule to the world, who cry in derision, Where is your boasted triumph and your Millennial glory? — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

I fear, in my dark hours, that it hungers for me and that it is only a matter of time before it eats its full of my sanity. — Caitlin Kittredge

I wonder what my father saw in his most secret sight of the right life. It's my guess he wanted to live out his life surrounded by friends and children and fertile fields of his own designing. I tihnk he wanted to die believing he had been in one the creation of a good sweet place. Those old pilgrims believed stories in which the West was a promise, a far away place where decent people could escape the wreckage of the old world and start over. Come to me, the dream whispers, and you can have one more chance. — William Kittredge

We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic. — William Kittredge

And this is the mission of the church
not civilization, but salvation
not better laws, purer legislation, social elevation, human equality and liberty, but first, the "kingdom of God and His righteousness;" regenerated hearts, and all other things will follow. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

There are a million great books out there if you just go to Google. There's a lot to pull apart. A lot of crazy, unbelievable stuff that's all completely true. I get into little obsessions, and I read everything I can find on one thing, and then I move onto another. — Caitlin Kittredge

How can you be dour when you have a tiny duck? — Caitlin Kittredge

Psychologically, Japanese women depend largely on each other. In their sex-segregated society, they could be criticized for living in a female ghetto, and yet they have what some American feminists are trying to build, a "women's culture" with its own customs, values and even language. — Kittredge Cherry