Quotes
No one ever took music away from me, but I’m damned if it ever sounds quite as good as it used to when I was twenty.
p. 555
“Not safe?” I asked, all innocence. “Surely it isn’t illegal here to complain about young people these days? How cruel. I had thought it a basic part of human nature, one of the few universally practiced human customs.”
p. 315
I was propelled, of course, by the traditional forces that had sent many generations along this road - by the small tight valley closing in around one, stifling the breath with its mossy mouth, the cottage walls narrowing like the arms of an iron maiden, the local girls whispering, ‘Marry, and settle down.’
Youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realities of grief.
p. 9
A youth loathes nothing more than his own callowness. Experience is his object. Experience, however ghastly, for the lad longs before all for the lined face and the chiseled squint of the vetern.
p. 91
The Beater has still been young enough to feel immortal, at least on his better days. It was all, Wow, if we don’t slow down, we’re gonna die before we get old, except somehow it hadn’t happened that way. So they’d all assumed it never would, not dying, not getting old—hell, not even growing up.
p. 109
Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old.
I am speaking to myself, as I was, all cocksure arrogance and empty chivlary. This is what it does to you, to be too good too young.
Men die in war, even men who are young and strong.
How could you do this, Robb. How could you be so heedless, so stupid? How could you be so ... so ... very ... young?
Boys believe nothing can hurt them, his doubt whispered. Grown men know better.
Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour.
