First line.
Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)
“I knew God had heard my prayer when I learned that it was you and no other who drew this case.”
“One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers?”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 11.
“Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.”
I, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/
Context: My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known —
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 11.
Source: Andre Cornelis (1886), Ch. 14
Context: Is there any God, any justice, is there either good or evil? None, none, none, none! There is nothing but a pitiless destiny which broods over the human race, iniquitous and blind, distributing joy and grief at haphazard. A God who says, "Thou shalt not kill," to him whose father has been killed? No, I don't believe it. No, if hell were there before me, gaping open, I would make answer: "I have done well," and I would not repent. I do not repent. My remorse is not for having seized the weapon and struck the blow, it is that I owe to him — to him — that infamous good service which he did me — that I cannot to the present hour shake from me the horrible gift I have received from that man. If I had destroyed the paper, if I had gone and given myself up, if I had appeared before a jury, revealing, proclaiming my deed, I should not be ashamed; I could still hold up my head. What relief, what joy it would be if I might cry aloud to all men that I killed him, that he lied, and I lied, that it was I, I, who took the weapon and plunged it into him! And yet, I ought not to suffer from having accepted — no — endured the odious immunity. Was it from any motive of cowardice that I acted thus? What was I afraid of? Of torturing my mother, nothing more. Why, then, do I suffer this unendurable anguish? Ah, it is she, it is my mother who, without intending it, makes the dead so living to me, by her own despair. She lives, shut up in the rooms where they lived together for sixteen years; she has not allowed a single article of furniture to be touched; she surrounds the man's accursed memory with the same pious reverence that my aunt formerly lavished on my unhappy father. I recognize the invincible influence of the dead in the pallor of her cheeks, the wrinkles in her eyelids, the white streaks in her hair. He disputes her with me from the darkness of his coffin; he takes her from me, hour by hour, and I am powerless against that love.
Variant: When it’s over, I want to say: All my life I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
“Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they're smart that amazes me.”
When asked what amazes him about people, in an interview with Grace Slick on Rockplace (11 February 1984) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpcvJiZUbzI
Context: Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they're smart that amazes me. It's baffling whenever you find someone who's smart — incredible. Soon you'll have zoos for such things.
Essay, "Six to eight black men" - p.157-158
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004)
"Isn't she lovely". Interview by Stacy Gueraseva for Laika magazine, issue 4, 2014, page 51.
“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
Source: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
