Annie Proulx - The Shipping News (1993)

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For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation. His middle initial was X. Face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork.

Annie Proulx
Archie was an expert at dividing the affairs of life into men's business and women's business. An empty cupboard and a full plate were the man's business, a full cupboard and an empty plate the concern of the woman.

Annie Proulx
Why do we weep in grief,' the aunt wondered. 'Dogs, deer, birds sufferent with dry eyes and in silence. The dumb suffering of animals. Probably a survival technique.

Annie Proulx
Quoyle with regards to Petal, his wife, There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering... In another time, in another sex, she would have been Genghis Khan.

Annie Proulx
If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.

Annie Proulx
'Dad, are we scared?' said Sunshine. 'No, honey. It's an adventure.

Annie Proulx
And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

Annie Proulx
Nutbeem influenced a little by the lunar cycle. Had a touch of werewolf. At full moon he burst, talked himself dry, took exercise in the form of dancing and fighting at the Starlight Lounge, then slowly fell back to contemplation.

Annie Proulx
Their silence comfortable. Something unfolding. But what? Not love, which wrenched and wounded. Not love, which came only once.

Annie Proulx
The old place of the Quoyles, half ruined, isolated, the walls and doors of it pumiced by stony lives of dead generations. The aunt felt a hot pang. Nothing would drive them out a second time.

Annie Proulx
Quoyle, who spoke little himself, inspired talkers. His only skill in the game of life

Annie Proulx
We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.

Annie Proulx
In a knot of eight crossings, which is about the average-size knot, there are 256 different 'over-and-under' arrangements possible... Make only one change in this 'over and under' sequence and either an entirely different knot is made or no knot at all may result.

Annie Proulx
You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

Annie Proulx
Dad, there's smoke coming out of the can and coming out of your mouth, too. How do you do that, daddy?

Annie Proulx
The editorial page played streams of invective across the provincial political scene like a fire hose. Harangues, pitted with epithets. Gammy bird was a hard bite. Looked life right in its shifty, bloodshot eye. A tough little paper. Gave Quoyle an uneasy feeling, the feeling of standing on a playground watching others play games whose rules he didn't know.

Annie Proulx
He [Quoyle] did not want a boat, shied from the thought of water. Ashamed he could not swim, couldn't learn.

Annie Proulx
The ocean twitched like a vast cloth spread over snakes.

Annie Proulx
Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?

Annie Proulx
It was not until the next evening that he discovered he had a page from Leviticus stuck to his back.

Annie Proulx
Which bloody misbegotten Card takes the liberty of recasting in his own insane tongue. As the bloody bog-rat's just done.

Annie Proulx
Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton...

Annie Proulx
Petal, like a persistent song phrase, like a few stubborn lines of verse memorized in childhood. The needle was stuck.

Annie Proulx
We run a car wreck photo every week, whether we have a car wreck or not. That's our golden rule.

Annie Proulx
And three lucky stones strung on a wire to keep the house safe.

Annie Proulx
That was the stuff of other lives, he was waiting for his to begin. He got in the habit of walking around the trailer and asking aloud, "Who knows?" He said, "Who knows?" For no one knew. He meant, anything could happen. A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.

Annie Proulx
Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.

Annie Proulx
We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.

Annie Proulx
Quoyle large, white, stumbling along going nowhere

Annie Proulx
Quoyle, you got any maritime connections?' 'My grandfather was a sealer.' 'Jesus. You always come out at me out of left field.

Annie Proulx