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Jack Cady Quotes

Jack Cady was an American author, born in Kentucky. He is known mostly as an award winning writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award.Cady was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, but served in the U.S. Coast Guard in Maine. He later had several jobs, including truck driver, auctioneer, landscaper and finally university instructor. He first taught creative writing at the University of Washington from 1968 until 1973, and he then had a number of brief teaching stints at colleges in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Alaska from 1973 to 1978. During 1985 he began teaching writing at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and he retired from that job in 1998. Cady married fellow writer Carol Orlock in 1977, and they remained married until his death. Cady's collected literary papers were donated to the Mortvedt Library at Pacific Lutheran University during the spring of 2006.

Cady is perhaps known best for the Nebula-winning short story "The Night We Buried Road Dog" . Stories of his were included in the Best American Short Stories anthologies of 1971 and 1972.

His dystopian novel McDowell's Ghost concerns a modern-day Southerner who keeps seeing the ghost of an ancestor killed during the Civil War; the spirit helps McDowell obtain justice for a female friend who was raped.

Another of Cady's books was The American Writer: Shaping a Nation's Mind, a survey of American literature. Wikipedia  

✵ 20. March 1932 – 14. January 2004

Works
Jack Cady: 22   quotes 1   like

Famous Jack Cady Quotes

“Either ghosts are a metaphor for history, or history is a metaphor for ghosts.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 133

“We press the enemy backward with memories, with the power of history, with scenes of sense and order.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 158

“Some remnant of battle must remain, something halting an advance. The ghost of a ghost may be more than a memory. It may be a piece of history that refuses to be rewritten.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 156

“Flags are symbols. Words are symbols. Steeples are symbols. Red lights in front of cathouses are symbols. The world don’t know it, but the world lives by symbols, some good, some as bad as flags.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 152

“We have the power of memory. We have the memory of order, and we still have voices. When memory dies, civilization dies.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 152

“The crotch and the brain are the engines of history.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 151

Jack Cady Quotes

“The fires of history burn hot and long, but memories of fires do not burn long enough.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 148

Memory , History

“I almost don’t believe in ghosts.”

Jack Cady

She was stating part of the problem. If ghosts are a metaphor for history, then belief is a leap into reality. If history is a metaphor for ghosts, matters get really serious.
Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 148

“I now knew what it was, but just because you can name a thing does not mean you understand it.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 145

Understanding

“You can only picture the future based on what you know about the past. If history dies the future can only be hideous.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 145

Future , History , Past

“I needed this the way guys in trenches need head lice.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 144

Way , Guy

“So what use are we? Burnside hopes to die exhausted in a cathouse, with the sweet-sweet taste of bourbon on his tongue. My own ambition is less raunchy. I want, at age ninety, to be gunned down while storming the Congress.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 142

Hope , Age

“The rules would seem to indicate, that if you start a war you really can’t complain when people drop bombs on you.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 141

War , People

“I saw old-fashioned cities, quiet streets, small shops, colorful flags and ornaments and decorations—life before machine guns, before communism and capitalism and the ambitions of generals.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 138

Communication , Fashion , Color , Life

“Absolute Evil exists. As kids we geriatrics learned all about it, and no damn social worker had better come along and blame “evil” on “conditions.””

Jack Cady

Evil is a force in the universe, a force using any weakness it finds to do its dirt; and with Evil, Hell is just a sideline.
Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 134

Learning , Evil

“Courage, combined with stupidity, does not make successful soldiers.”

Jack Cady

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 133

Courage , Success , Stupidity

“Men build all kinds of worlds in order to defeat fear and loneliness.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 502

Loneliness , World , Fear , Men

“Her eyes held that long-distance prairie look, a look knowing wind and fire and hard times, stuff that either breaks people or leaves them wise.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 495

Time , People

“It’s no big job to fool yourself.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 494

Fools

“Never confuse an idiot.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 476

“All the mysteries of the world seem normal after dark. If imagination shows dead thumbs aching for a ride, those dead folk only prove the hot and spermy goodness of life.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 469

Imagination , World , Dead , Life

“On top of the war talk, women were driving me crazy: the ones who said “no” and the ones who said “yes.””

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

It got downright mystifying just trying to figure out which was worse. At nineteen, it’s hard to know how to act.
Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 463

War , Women

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