“He wanted to think of words that would make some difference but there were none in any language he knew that were sufficient to the moment or that would change a single thing.”

—  Kent Haruf, book Eventide

Source: Eventide

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He wanted to think of words that would make some difference but there were none in any language he knew that were suffi…" by Kent Haruf?
Kent Haruf photo
Kent Haruf3
Novelist 1943–2014

Related quotes

Yitzhak Rabin photo

“We did not think that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to Sinai on May 14 would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”

Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995) Israeli politician, statesman and general

As quoted in Le Monde (28 February 1968), when he was Chief of General Staff for Israel

“If things were different, if there were no revolution, no war, no threads of light, if he were rich, would he go back to London with her and ask for her hand in marriage? He smiled, for the answer was simple. Yes, yes, he would.”

Sally Gardner book The Red Necklace

Source: The Red Necklace

Samanta Schweblin photo

“In the moment you decide to publish, you hand them off. But it’s interesting how certain stories have remained present—how some were published over and over in different languages, which meant they always seemed close by, and I would change little things here or there.”

Samanta Schweblin (1978) Argentine writer

On her work being translated into several languages in “Samanta Schweblin: There’s No Place Like Home, Including Home Itself” https://lithub.com/samanta-schweblin-theres-no-place-like-home-including-home-itself/ in LitHub (2019 Jan 15)

L. Frank Baum photo

“He knew that the best of children were sometimes naughty, and that the naughty ones were often good. It is the way with children, the world over, and he would not have changed their natures had he possessed the power to do so.”

L. Frank Baum book The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902)
Context: And, afterward, when a child was naughty or disobedient, its mother would say:
"You must pray to the good Santa Claus for forgiveness. He does not like naughty children, and, unless you repent, he will bring you no more pretty toys."But Santa Claus himself would not have approved this speech. He brought toys to the children because they were little and helpless, and because he loved them. He knew that the best of children were sometimes naughty, and that the naughty ones were often good. It is the way with children, the world over, and he would not have changed their natures had he possessed the power to do so.

Philipp Meyer photo

“Maybe all people with minds like Isaac's were the same. She knew he would make a much larger contribution than she ever would - he cared only about things much bigger than his own life. Ideas, truths, the reasons things were. As if he himself, his own existence, was somehow incidental.”

Philipp Meyer book American Rust

American Rust (2009)

Maimónides photo

“He who thinks he can have flesh and bones without being subject to any external influence, or any accidents of matter, unconsciously wishes to reconcile two opposites, viz., to be at the same time subject and not subject to change. If man were never subject to change there could be no generation; there would be one single being, but no individuals forming a species.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Compare Galileo, "...for my part I consider the earth very noble and admirable precisely because of the diverse alterations, changes, generations, etc. that occur in it incessantly. If, not being subject to any changes... I should deem it a useless lump in the universe, devoid of activity and, in a word, superfluous and essentially non-existent." Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.12

Lewis Mumford photo

“I would die happy if I knew that on my tombstone could be written these words, "This man was an absolute fool. None of the disastrous things that he reluctantly predicted ever came to pass!"”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Address to the National Book Awards Committee, published in My Works and Days (1979)

Thomas Chatterton photo

“I cannot find in Chatterton's works any thing so extraordinary as the age at which they were written. They have a facility, vigour, and knowledge, which were prodigious in a boy of sixteen, but which would not have been so in a boy of twenty. He did not show extraordinary powers of genius, but extraordinary precocity. Nor do I believe he would have written better, had he lived. He knew this himself, or he would have lived. Great geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of to kill themselves.”

Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) English poet, forger

William Hazlitt Lectures on the English Poets (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1818) p. 243.
Criticism

“Words were shapes and sounds to him. He saw them, as if he were listening to an unknown language, in shapes.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Maeve Gilmore (his widow), Introduction to A Book of Nonsense, p. 10

Related topics