# Quote — Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

> At Bishop they learn'd that Dixon had been buried in back of the Quaker Meeting-House in Staindrop. Doctor Isaac stay'd with his Father, step for step. At the grave, which by Quaker custom was unmark'd, Mason beseech'd what dismally little he knew of God, to help Dixon through. The grass was long and beaded with earlier rain. A Cat emerg'd from it and star'd for a long time, appearing to know them.
>
> "Dad?" Doc had taken his arm. For an instant, unexpectedly, Mason saw the little Boy who, having worried about Storms at Sea, as Beasts in the Forest, came running each time to make sure his father had return'd safely, — whose gift of ministering to others Mason was never able to see, let alone accept, in his blind grieving, his queasiness of Soul before a life and a death, his refusal to touch the Baby, tho' 'twas not possible to blame him.... The Boy he had gone to the other side of the Globe to avoid was looking at him now with nothing in his face but concern for his Father.
>
> "Oh, Son." He shook his Head. He didn't continue.
>
> "It's your Mate," Doctor Isaac assur'd him, "It's what happens when your Mate dies."

- Author: [Thomas Pynchon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon.md)
- Book: [Mason & Dixon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon#Mason_%26_Dixon_(1997)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon/at-bishop-they

## More from this book

> If America was a person, — and it sat down, — Lancaster town would be plunged into a Darkness unbreathable.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon/if-america-was.md)

> Have you ever fall'n into one of those Cometary Dazes, with the way the Object grows brighter and brighter each night? These Apparitions in the Sky, we never observe them but in Motion, — gone in seconds, and if they return, we do not see them. Once safely a part of the Night Sky, they may hang there at their Pleasure, performing whatever their Work corresponds to shifting jibs and stay-sails, keeping perfectly upon Station, mimicking any faint, unnam'd Star you please. Do they watch us? Are they visits from the past, from an Age of Faith, when Miracles still literally happen'd?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon/have-you-ever.md)

> Now, nothing in the Sky looks the same. "As to the Comet, — I cannot account for how, — but there came this night, to this boggy Miasmatick place, an exceptional Clarity of the Air, … a sort of optickal Tension among the Stars, that seem'd ever just about to break radiantly thro'… And there. In Leo, bright-man'd, lo, it came. It came ahead. And 'twould be but Prelude to the Finger of Corsica, — which now appear'd, pointing down from Heaven. And the place where it pointed was the place I knew I must journey to, for beneath the Sky-borne Index lay, as once beneath a Star, an Infant that must, again, re-make the World, — this time 'twas a Sign from Earth, not only from Heaven, showing the way.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon/now-nothing-in-the.md)