Some Excellent Words

8/9/2019 Some Excellent Words

1/21

Cairo cried in a voice shrill with indignation: Suppose we give them you, MrSpade, or Miss OShaugnessy? How about that if youre so set on giving them

somebody?Spade smiled at the Levantine and answered him evenly: You people want the

falcon. Ive got it. A fall-guy is part of the price Im asking. As for Miss OShaugnessy

his dispassionate glance moved to her white perplexed face and then back to Cairo andhis shoulders rose and fell a fraction of an inch if you think she can be rigged for thepart Im perfectly willing to discuss it with you.

The girl put her hand to her throat, uttered a short strangled cry, and movedfarther away from him.

Cairo, his face and body twisting with excitement, exclaimed: You seem toforget that you are not in a position to insist on anything.

Spade laughed a harsh, derisive snort.Gutman said, in a low voice that tried to make firmness ingratiating: Come now,

gentlemen, lets keep our discussion on a friendly basis; but there certainly is he wasaddressing Spade something in what Mr Cairo says. You must take into consideration

the- Like hell I must. Spade flung his words out with a brutal sort of carelessness

that gave them more weight than they could have got from dramatic emphasis orloudness. If you kill me, how are you going to get the bird? If I know you cant afford to

kill me till you have it, how are you going to scare me into giving it to you?Gutman cocked his head to the left and considered these questions. His eyes

twinkled between his puckered lips. Presently he gave his genial answer: Well, sir, thereare other means of persuasion besides killing and threatening to kill.

Sure, Spade agreed, but theyre not much good unless the threat of death isbehind them to hold the victim down. See what I mean? If you try anything I dont like I

wont stand for it. Ill make it a matter of your having to call it off or kill me, knowingyou cant afford to kill me.

I see what you mean, Gutman chuckled. That is an attitude which calls for themost delicate judgement on both sides, because, as you know, sir, men are likely to forget

in the heat of the action where their best interest lies and let their emotions carry themaway.

Spade too was all smiling blandness: Thats the trick, from my side, he said, tomake my play strong enough that it ties you up, but yet not make you mad enough to

bump me off against your better judgement.Gutman said fondly: By Gad, sir, you are a character!

From The Maltese Falcon.


2/21

There was a hanging light in Pattons headquarters but the shack was empty and hisBack in Twenty Minutes sign was still against the inside of the glass part of the door. I

kept on going down to the boat-landing and beyond to the edge of the desertedswimming-beach. A few put-puts and speedboats were still fooling around on the silky

water. Across the lake tiny yellow lights began to show in toy cabins perched on

miniature slopes. A single bright star glowed low in the north-east above the ridge of themountains. A robin sat on the spike top of a hundred-foot pine and waited for it to bedark enough for him to sing his good-night song.

In a little while it was dark enough and he sang and went away into the invisibledepths of sky. I snapped my cigarette into the motionless water a few feet away and

climbed back into the car and started in the direction of Little Fawn Lake.

From The Lady in the Lake.


3/21

The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: Phillip Marlowe. . . .Investigations. It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor

that was new at about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. Thedoor is locked, but next to it is another door with the same legend which is not locked.

Come on in theres nobody in here but me and a big bluebottle fly. But not if youre

from Manhattan, Kansas.

From The Little Sister.


4/21

But Scorseses world came crashing down after Labor Day 1978. He had beenliving with Isabella Rosselini since early summer. He, Rossellini, De Niro, and Martin,

went to the Telluride Film Festival. We didnt have any coke, and somebody gave ussome garbage, it made us sick, recalls Mardik. That weekend, Scorsese started coughing

up blood, and blacked out for the first time in his life. From Telluride, he went to New

York, where he collapsed. He was bleeding from his mouth, bleeding from his nose,bleeding from his eyes, ass. He was very near death, Martin adds. Rossellini had to go toItaly for work, and when she left, after that weekend, she thought she was never going to

see him alive again.Steve Prince took Scorsese to New York Hospital. A doctor came running down

to ER carrying a sample of his blood, yelling, Is this your blood?Yeah, Scorsese replied, blankly.

Do you realize you have no platelets?I dont know what that means.

It means youre bleeding internally everywhere.I want to get back to work.

You cant go anywhere, you may get a brain haemorrhage any second.Scorseses condition appeared to be a result of the interaction among his asthma

medication, other prescription drugs, and the bad coke he had taken over the weekend.He was down to 109 pounds. The doctor stopped all the drugs and pumped him full of

cortisone. He was put in a palatial room previously occupied by the Shah of Iran, but hecouldnt sleep, and the first three nights he stayed up watching movies, among them Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, appropriately enough. Eventually the cortisone worked, and hisplatelet count started to rise, stopping the bleeding.

Finally, says Robertson, Marty got a doctor who conveyed the message thateither he changed his life or he was going to die. We knew we had to change trains. Our

lives were way too rich. The cholesterol level was unimaginable. I went back to myfamily, hoping they would overlook my fool heart.

De Niro came into Scorseses room, said, Whats the matter with you, Marty?Dont you want to live to see if your daughter is gonna grow up and get married? Are you

going to be one of those flash-in-the-pan directors who does a couple of good movies andthen its over for them? He changed the subject toRaging Bull, said, You know, we

can make this picture. We can really do a great job. Are we doing it or not? Scorsesereplied, Yes. He had finally found the hook: the self-destructiveness, the wanton

damage to the people around him, just for its own sake. He thought: I am Jake.

FromEast Riders Raging Bulls


5/21

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes outagainst injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a

million different centres of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweepdown the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Robert Kennedy, Cape Town, 1966


6/21

After a long time he came up with something he must have wanted to ask fromthe first. Do you think it was a stick-up and foolishly he tried to fight his way out? You

know what I mean - that it wasnt connected to anything in his past.The police dont know, I said.

But do you? He asked, and I felt the implication.

Ive said Ive told you all I know. If you push me far enough, all I really know isthat he was a fine fisherman.You know more than that, my father said. He was beautiful.

Yes, I said, he was beautiful. He should have been you taught him.My father looked at me for a long time he just looked at me. So this was the last

time he and I ever spoke to each other about Pauls death.Indirectly, though, he was present in many of our conversations. Once, for

instance, my father asked me a series of questions which made me wonder whether Iunderstood even my father whom I felt closer to than any man I have ever known. You

like to tell true stories, dont you? He asked, and I answered, Yes, I like to tell storiesthat are true.

Then, he asked, After you have finished your true stories sometime, why dontyou make up a story and the people to go with it?

Only then will you understand what happened and why. It is those we live withand love who elude us.

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead,but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course Iusually fish the big waters alone, though some friends think I shouldnt. Like many

fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I oftendo not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the

canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of theBig Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river wascut by the worlds great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of

the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the wordsare theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

From A River Runs Through It.


7/21

It was sung by migrants who struck out for distant shores and pioneers who pushed westinto an unforgiving wilderness. Yes we can!

Barack Obama, 2008


8/21

During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I havefought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have

cherished the ideal of a free and democratic society in which all persons live together inharmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and hope to see

realized. But my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Nelson Mandela, 1964.


9/21

Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a time-table the names of those whocame to Gatsbys house that summer. It is an old time-table now, disintegrating at its

folds, and headed This schedule in effect July 5th

, 1922. But I can still see the greynames, and they will give you a better impression than my generalities of those who

accepted Gatsbys hospitality and paid the subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatever

about him.From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a mannamed Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who was drained last

summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan namedBlackbuck, who always gathered in a corner and flipped up their noses like goats at

whosoever came near. And the Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach andMr Chrysties wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair, they say, turned cotton-white one

winter afternoon for no good reason at all.Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remember. He came only once, in white

knickerbockers, and had a fight with a man named Etty in the garden. From farther out onthe Island came the Cheadles and O. R. P. Schraeders, and the Stonewall Jackons Abrams

of Georgia, and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there three days beforehe went to the penitentiary, so drunk out on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swetts

automobile ran over his right hand. The Dancies came, too, and S. B. Whitebait, who waswell over sixty, and Maurice A. Fink, and the Hammerheads, and Beluga the tobacco

importer, and Belugas girls.From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Cecil Roebuck and Cecil

Schoen and Gulick the State senator and Newton Orchid, who controlled Films ParExcellence, and Eckhaust and Clyde Cohen and Don S. Schwartz (the son) and Arthur

McCarty, all connected with the movies in one way or another. And the Catlips and theBembergs and G. Earl Muldoon, brother to that Muldoon who afterward strangled his

wife. Da Fontano the promoter came there, and Ed Legros and James B. (Rot-Gut)Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly they came to gamble, and when Ferret

wandered into the garden it meant he was cleaned out and Associated Traction wouldhave to fluctuate profitably next day.

A man named Klipspringer was there so often that he became known as theboarder I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical people there were Gus Waize

and Horace ODonovan and Lester Myer, and George Duckweed and Francis Bull. Alsofrom New York were the Chromes and the Backhyssons and the Dennickers and Russel

Betty and the Corrigans and the Kellehers and the Dewars and the Scullys and S. W.Belcher and the Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and Henry L. Palmetto,

who killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train in Times Square.Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite the

same ones in physical person, but they were so identical one with another that itinevitably seemed they had been there before. I have forgotten their names Jacqueline, I

think, or else Consuela, or Glory or Judy or June, and their last names were either themelodious names of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American

capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to be.In addition to all these I can remember that Faustina OBrien came there at least

once and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer, who had his nose shot off in the war, andMr Albrucksburger and Miss Haag, his fiance, and Ardita FitzPeters and Mr P. Jewett,


10/21

once head of the American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip, with a man reputed to be herchauffeur, and a prince of something, whom we called Duke, and whose name, if I ever

knew it, I have forgotten.All these people came to Gatsbys house in the summer.

From The Great Gatsby


11/21

One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later fromcollege at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old

dim Union Station at six oclock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends,already caught up into their own holiday gaieties, to bid them a hasty good-bye. I

remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-Thats and the chatter of

frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances,and the matchings of invitations: Are you going to the Ordways? the Herseys? theSchultzes? and the long green tickets clasped in our gloved hands. And last the murky

yellow cars of Chicago, Milwaukee and St Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmasitself on the tracks beside the gate.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began tostretch out beside the us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small

Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew indeep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably

aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we meltedindistinguishably into it again.

Thats my Middle West not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns,but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the

frosty dark on the snow.

From The Great Gatsby


12/21

Most of the big shores places were closed now and there were hardly any lightsexcept the shadowy, moving glow of a ferry-boat across the Sound. And as the moon rise

higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of theold island here that flowered for Dutch sailors eyes a fresh green breast of the new

world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsbys house, had once

pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitoryenchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent,compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face

for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsbys

wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisys dock. He had comea long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could

hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere backin that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on

under the night.Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes

before us. It eluded us then, but thats no matter tomorrow we will run faster, stretchout our arms further And one fine morning

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

From The Great Gatsy


13/21

Describe the old Indian in the Mexican desert. I was driving along in a car and far off Ispotted what looked like and Indian hat lying in the sand. I stopped and walked towards

it. Under the hat sat and Indian in a shallow hole that he had dug himself in the sand toprotect himself from the wind. In front of him stood a wooden gramophone with a

shabby, bashed-in megaphone. The old man was turning the crank the whole time (the

wind-up spring was obviously long gone) and playing on record he had only one record which was so worn out that the grooves were barely there. From the tube issued ahoarse roar, crackling and the disordered tatters of a Latin American song:Rio

Manazares dejame pasar(River Manzanares, Let me cross). Even though I had greetedhim and stood in front of him for a long time, the old man paid no attention to me. Papa

I finally shouted, there is no river here.He kept quiet, then, after a while, he replied, Son, I am the river and I cant cross

myself. He said nothing more but kept turning the crank and listening to the record.

From The Soccer War


14/21

They waited each and every one of the forty-six. Not screaming, although someof them must have fought like the devil not to. The mud was up to his thighs and he held

onto the bars. Then it came another yank from the left this time and less forceful thanthe first because of the mud it passed through.

It started like the chain-up but the difference was the power of the chain. One by

one, from Hi Man back on down the line, they dove. Down through the mud under thebars, blind, groping. Some had sense enough to wrap their hands in their shirts, covertheir faces with rags, put on their shoes. Others just plunged, simply ducked down and

pushed out, fighting up, reaching for air. Some lost direction and their neighbours, feelingthe confused pull of the chain, snatched them around. For one lost, all lost. The chain that

held them would save all or none, and Hi Man was the delivery. They talked through thatchain like Sam Morse and, Great God, they all came up. Like the unshriven dead,

zombies on the loose, holding the chain in their hands, they trusted the rain and the dark,yes, but mostly Hi Man and each other.

FromBeloved


15/21

Here, take this purse, thou whom the heavens plaguesHave humbled to all strikes. That I am wretched

Makes thee the happier. Heavens deal so still!Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man

That slaves your ordinance, that will not see

Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly!So distribution should undo excess

And each man have enough. Dost thou know Dover?

FromKing Lear


16/21

Come on, sir, heres the place. Stand still! How fearful

And dizzy tis to cast ones eyes so low.

The crows and choughs that wing the midway airShow scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down

Hangs one that gathers sampire dreadful trade!

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.The fishermen that walk upon the beach

Appear like mice, and yon tall anchoring bark

Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoyAlmost too small for right. The murmuring surge

That on thunnumbered idle pebbles chafes

Cannot be heard so high. Ill look no more,

Lest my brain turn, and he deficient sightTopple down headlong.

FromKing Lear


17/21

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked

how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer that, for anything I knewto the contrary, it had lain there forever; nor would it perhaps be easy to show the

absurdity of this answer. But suppose that I had found a watch upon the ground,

and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I shouldhardly think of the answer I had before been given, that for anything I knew, thewatch might always have been there.

Paley here appreciates the difference between natural and physical objects like stones,

and designed and manufactured objects like watches. He goes on to expound theprecision with which the cogs and springs of a watch are fashioned, and the intricacy with

which they are put together. If we found an object such as a watch upon a heath, even ifwe didnt know how it had come into existence, its own intricacy and precision would

force us to conclude

That the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at sometime, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the

purpose we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, anddesigned its use.

Nobody could reasonably dissent from this conclusion, Paley insists, yet that is just what

the atheist, in effect, does when he contemplates the works of nature, for:

Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed inthe watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature,

of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.

Paley drives home his point with a beautiful and reverent description of the dissectedmachinery of life, beginning with the human eye, a favourite example which Darwin was

later to use and which will reappear throughout this book. Paley compares the eye with adesigned instrument such as a telescope, and concludes that there is precisely the same

proof that the eye was made for vision, as there is that the telescope was made forassisting it. The eye must have had a designer, just as the telescope had.

Paleys argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological

scholarship of the day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong.

From The Blind Watchmaker


18/21

At the long tables with laptops cords, I am seated next to a dwarf in a wheelchair,a bizarre counter-point to the disembodied digital future. A reporter for one of the

industry trade magazines, he has been offering,sotte voce, a running commentary on thedigital aristocracy. At first his whispering seemed unruly and bitter to me, but I am

secretly starting to appreciate it. Where do you think Halsey Minor will be in five years?

Is greatness within his grasp? I cant decide, he says.Couldnt begin to guess, I say, hearing and regretting my envy.How long do you guys have left? He asks pointedly, merrily, about my

business.Well, I respond, were not unsatisfied with our model.

Come on.Really, were in fairly good shape.

How many people have you got on staff now?Over seventy, I say with pride even though I realise that each person is another

person the boat cannot handle.Whats your burn rate?

All in all, half a million a month or so, I shrug.Rest in peace, baby.

FromBurnrate


19/21

But the moon changed. It moved around the sky; it waxed and waned. On thenights when it rose full and yellow over the plains around Lonesome Dove, it seemed so

close that a man could almost ride over with a ladder and step right onto it. Deets hadeven imagined doing it, a few times propping a ladder against the old full moon, and

stepping on. If he did it, one thing was sure: Mr. Gus would have something to talk about

for a long time. Deets had to grin at the mere thought of how excited Mr. Gus would getif he took off and rode the moon. For he thought of it like a ride, something he might justdo for a night or two when things were slow. Then, when the moon came back close to

Lonesome Dove, he would step off and walk back home. It would surprise them all.

FromLonesome Dove


20/21

Jose Arcadio Buendia, without understanding, stretched out his hand toward thecake, but the giant moved it away. Five reales more to touch it, he said. Jose Arcado

Buendia paid them and put his hand on the ice and held it there for several minutes as hisheart filled with fear and jubilation at the contact with mystery. Without knowing what to

say, he paid ten reales more so that his sons could have that prodigious experience. Little

Jose Arcadio refused to touch it. Aurelio, on the other hand, took a step forward, and puthis hand on it, withdrawing it immediately. Its boiling, he exclaimed, startled. But hisfather paid no attention to him. Intoxicated by the evidence of the miracle, he forgot at

that moment about the frustration of his delirious undertakings and Melquiades body,abandoned to the appetite of the squids. He paid another five reales and with his hand on

the cake, as if giving testimony on the holy scriptures, he exclaimed:This is the greatest invention of our time.

From One Hundred Years of Solitude


21/21

People will do anything.Yessir. They will.

You live long enough youll see it.Yessir. I have.

Mr Johnson didnt answer. He flipped the butt of his cigarette out across the yard

in a slow red arc.Aint nothing to burn out there. I remember when you could have grassfires in thiscountry.

I didnt mean Id seen everything, John Grady said.I know you didnt.

I just meant Id seen things Id as soon not of.I know it. Theres hard lessons in this world.

Whats the hardest?I dont know. Maybe its just that when things are gone theyre gone. They aint

comin back.Yessir.

FromCities of the Plain

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Some Excellent Words