Sublime

“‘Robert,’ he was addressing me, ‘haven’t some of the people from your school been able to go down and register without violence here in Pike County?’ I thought to myself that Southerners are exposed the most, when they boast.”

What struck me particularly about him was the mixture of a sort of innate natural ferocity with a similarly innate nobility—a mixture such as I have never come across in any other person.

Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end.

Daddy, he used to yammer on how the water was the source of life itself for him, fountain of youth and all that and—sure, it was. But it wasn’t just life for him. It was death.”

“People,” Mr. Armstrong finally kind of yelled, like he did whenever we were ignorant in class. “Are you following me here? A war. Opposite sides. Flying both those flags at once makes no sense. It’s like rooting for the Generals and the Abingdon Falcons in the same game.”

Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.

that pleased him fundamentally.

He is not an intellectual, but he is sincere and industrious in his search, and this is all that is required. He is also full of contradictions—he tries to be rational and moral, and then is overcome by passion and desire.