Carl shook his head mournfully. "Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.
- Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
At the end of next week I am moving away from Philadelphia, and right now I'm pretty happy about that.
4 comments:
Where are you moving to?
hey that statement by KM is the basis of my MA. did i tell you that?
also, did you read o pioneers? it's really lovely.
also, talk to me about the color purple, damnit!
haha i did not know that that particular statement was the basis, no! i think i came across it on a blog or somewhere. I did read o pioneers :) good and sad, just the way i like my books.
courtney--why aren't you on gchat ever anymore? i'll explain there!
Post a Comment