Lee, I’m not good enough for him.Now, what do you mean by that?I’m not being funny. He doesn’t think about me. He’s made someone up, and it’s like he put my skin on her. I’m not like that—not like the made-up one.What’s she like?Pure! said Abra. Just absolutely pure. Nothing but pure—never a bad thing. I’m not like that.Nobody is, said Lee.He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t even want to know me. He wants that—white—ghost.
Навярно у всекиго от нас има по едно скрито блато,в което се въдят и растат,и укрепват всякакви грозни идолни неща.Ала ние ограждаме тези плаващи твари и рекат ли да изпълзят навън подхлъзват се и падат назад.Не е ли обаче възможно в мрачните блата на някои хора злото така да се развие,че да прекрачи през оградата и да плъзне на свобода? Няма ли такъв човек да стане за нас чудовище?И не сме ли по някакъв начин сродени с него чрез тези наши скрити води? След като ние сме ги измислили,би било абсурдно да не разбираме еднакво и ангелите,и дяволите.
But you said you did not love our father. How can you have faith in him if you didn’t love him?Maybe that’s the reason, Adam said slowly, feeling his way. Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You were. Maybe—maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure—never sure of her because you aren’t sure of yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love him. Maybe he loved me. He tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a sacrifice, maybe to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe—why, maybe it’s a kind of reverse.
You’re pretty full of yourself. You’re marveling at the tragic spectacle of Caleb Trask—Caleb themagnificent, the unique. Caleb whose suffering should have its Homer. Did you ever think of yourselfas a snot-nose kid—mean sometimes, incredibly generous sometimes? Dirty in your habits, andcuriously pure in your mind. Maybe you have a little more energy than most, just energy, but outsideof that you’re very like all the other snot-nose kids. Are you trying to attract dignity and tragedy toyourself because your mother was a whore? And if anything should have happened to your brother,will you be able to sneak for yourself the eminence of being a murderer, snot-nose?
I’d think there are degrees of greatness, Adam said.I don’t think so, said Samuel. That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility - that hugeness - you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I’m glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other?
He bathed in icy water and scrubbed and scratched his body with a block of pumice stone, and the painof his scraping seemed good to him. He knew that he had to tell his guilt to his father and beg his forgiveness. And he had to humble himself to Aron, not only now but always. He could not live without that. And yet, when he was called out and stood in the room with Sheriff Quinn and his father, he was as raw and angry as a surly dog and his hatred of himself turned outward toward everyone—a vicious cur he was, unloved, unloving.
Suppose it were true—Adam, the most rigidly honestman it was possible to find, living all his life on stolen money. Lee laughed to himself—now thissecond will, and Aron, whose purity was a little on the self-indulgent side, living all his life on theprofits from a whorehouse. Was this some kind of joke or did things balance so that if one went too farin one direction an automatic slide moved on the scale and the balance was re-established?
If I could do this book properly it would be one of the really fine books and a truly American book. But I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. i'll just have to work from a background of these. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty it is all I can expect of my poor brain.... If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.
I think perhaps Liza accepted the world as she accepted the Bible, with all of its paradoxes and its reverses. She did not like death but she knew it existed, and when it came it did not surprise her.Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, hut he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immortality he deeply felt, and the one crack in his wall caused the whole structure to crash. I think he had always thought he could argue himself out of death. It was a personal opponent and one he could lick.To Liza it was simply death—the thing promised and expected. She could go on and in her sorrow put a pot of beans in the oven, bake six pies, and plan to exactness how much food would be necessary properly to feed the funeral guests. And she could in her sorrow see that Samuel had a clean white shirt and that his black broadcloth was brushed and free of spots and his shoes blacked. Perhaps it takes these two kinds to make a good marriage, riveted with several kinds of strengths.
I'll tell ya one thing -- the jail house is jus' a kind a way a drivin' a guy slowly nuts. See? An' they go nuts, an' you see 'em an' hear 'em, an' pretty soon you don' know if you're nuts or not. When they get to screamin' in the night sometimes you think it's you doin' the screamin'--an' sometimes it is.