Prairie Quotes - Page 4

• I believe the poor fierce-eyed child had figured out that with a mere fifty dollars in her purse she might somehow reach Broadway or Hollywood - or the foul kitchen of a diner (Help Wanted) in a dismal ex-prairie state, with the wind blowing, and the stars blinking, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen, and everything soiled, torn, dead.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Stars, Children, Believe

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.263, Vintage

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• About 4000 men, women and teenagers regularly venture out to play a game in -20 weather and stinging prairie winds. Bundled in sweaters and snow suits, balaclavas on their heads and suction cupped shoes on their feet. They slip and slide across the outdoor hockey rinks chasing a soft rubber puck in the Sponge Hockey Capital of the World.

  Bob Cox

  Teenager, Hockey, Men

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• It is a revolution; a revolution of the most intense character; in which belief in the justice, prudence, and wisdom of secession is blended with the keenest sense of wrong and outrage, and it can no more be checked by human effort for the time than a prairie fire by a gardener's watering pot.

  Judah P. Benjamin

  Character, Fire, Justice

  "The Emergence of Lincoln". Book by Allan Nevins, p. 387, 1950.

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• If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Weed, Travel, Strong

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.346, Yale University Press

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• I could see myself in some sort of pioneer bonnet, it's my childhood fantasy. But, I think I look too jewish for the prairie.

  Rachel Dratch

  Women, Thinking, Childhood

  "Amy Poehler Talks to Rachel Dratch About Her Memoir". Interview with Amy Poehler, www.thedailybeast.com. March 26, 2012.

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• It was always a fantasy of mine growing up - my favorite program was always 'Little House on the Prairie' - so I always wanted to wear those looks. When I was a child, I wouldn't let my mom put me in anything but calico dresses and now... whaddaya know, every day I'm in a calico dress, basically, so it's kind of funny.

  Chloe Sevigny

  Funny, Mom, Children

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• See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps-often but old bottles and vials, though. ... He burns, too, the purest of oil. ... It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveler on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game.

  Herman Melville

  Sweet, Hunting, Games

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby Dick (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.294, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

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• Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.

  Annie Dillard

  Summer, New York, Writing

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.82, Canongate Books

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• Ghostly legends dot the Prairie State from its big cities to its small towns. These stories make each community unique in a way that no other landmark ever could But Michael Kleen understands that these ghosts are more than just stories. As a folklorist and historian, Kleen shows readers the connection between our past and our present. Haunting Illinois is more than just a ghostly travel guide, it’s an adventure offering new insight on the haunts you know, but also takes you on a trip to the spirits in your own backyard.

  Jeff Belanger

  Adventure, Unique, Past

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• [C]lass consciousness is not one of our national diseases; we suffer, indeed, from its opposite-the delusion that class barriers are not real. That delusion reveals itself in many forms, some of them as beautiful as a glass eye. One is the Liberal doctrine that a prairie demagogue promoted to the United States Senate will instantly show all the sagacity of a Metternich ... another is the doctrine that a moronrun through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will cease thereby to be a moron.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Real, Eye

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• I thought A Prairie Home Companion would be an interesting thing to do for a summer or so. Public radio was just seven years old in 1974. It was a tiny organization in which a lot of things got started simply because there was all this time to fill. If you wanted to do an hour on Lithuanian folk dancing, you probably could have done it.

  Garrison Keillor

  Summer, Home, Years

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• My grandmother was born in 1900, and she would regale me with tales I call 'Little House on the Prairie' tales, but they were tales of segregated and racist America growing up in Alabama and Mississippi, where she came from.

  David Alan Grier

  Growing Up, Grandmother, America

  "David Alan Grier's 'Sporting Life' On Broadway". "Fresh Air", www.npr.org. May 22, 2012.

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• I've always liked trees. And then, growing up, I took an interest in ecology, hedges being destroyed, the landscape being turned into prairies.

  Clive Anderson

  Growing Up, Tree, Landscape

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• I've long believed that one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people and the expectation that anyone's child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or a corporation. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a land of small farmers, of shopowners, and merchants. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act that ensured that the great western prairies of America would be the realm of independent, propertyowning citizens-a mightier guarantee of freedom is difficult to imagine.

  Ronald Reagan

  Children, Growing Up, Independent

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), Ronald Reagan (1982). “Ronald Reagan”

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• I used to be Amish. I had to stay a lot with my grandparents or aunts and uncles who are Amish, so I was sort of partially Amish. When I go back there now I still get into that culture. I can drive a horse and buggy because they don't use cars. And, of course, there's no electricity. I respect them a lot. The Amish like to live a very plain lifestyle, the way they think God intended. It sort of brings you back to like Little House on the Prairie days or something.

  Verne Troyer

  Horse, Uncles, Aunt

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• My love, growing up on the Prairies, was country music.

  Randy Bachman

  Country, Growing Up, Growing

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• But there were moments when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of pinewoods or prairie. One went: Don’t wanna sleep, Don’t wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin’ through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her the most, for often she continued it long after her hair hard dried, after the sun had gone and there were lighted windows in the dusk.

  Truman Capote

  Song, Sleep, Hair

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• Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.

  Betty Smith

  Beautiful, Summer, New York

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.5, Harper Collins

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• An acre of windy prairie could produce between $4,000 and 10,000 worth of electricity per year - which is far more than the value of the land's crop of corn or wheat.

  Denis Hayes

  Years, Land, Energy

  Denis Hayes (2000). “The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair”, p.40, Island Press

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• When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.

  Adlai E. Stevenson

  Country, Mean, Patriotic

  "Lend Me Your Ears : Great Speeches In History" by William Safire, (p. 81 - 82), 2004.

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• My parents gave up a lot to bring me up in the little house on the prairie, and I wasn't prepared to make those sacrifices, nor was the generation before me and the generation after.

  Tony Parsons

  Sacrifice, Parent, House

  "Punk turns new romantic" by Tony Parsons, www.theguardian.com. June 27, 1999.

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• A luxury meal was prairie sandwiches - two slices of bread with wide-open spaces between them.

  Chic Murray

  Funny, Humor, Luxury

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• Surely it's better to live in the country, to live on a prairie by a drawing of rivers, in Iowa or Illinois or Indiana, say, than in any city, in any stinking fog of human beings, in any blooming orchard of machines. It ought to be.

  William H. Gass

  Country, Illinois, Fog

  William H. Gass (1968). “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories”, p.193, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Twenty years after the Andy Griffith Show when Andy did Matlock, he hired me for four episodes. I told him I wanted to develop an Aunt Bea type role for Matlock, but he was against it. I did appear on other popular TV shows, like Family Affair, My Three Sons, Barnaby Jones and Little House on the Prairie.

  Betty Lynn

  Son, Aunt, Years

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• When I heard you could get a disease from playing with your prairie dog, I thought, 'Wow, what a euphemism.' I thought playing with my prairie dog was the best way to avoid diseases.

  Greg Giraldo

  Dog, Disease, Wow

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