Nathan Coulter

Yesterday I started Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry. Today...well, lets just say I haven't read a book quite so quickly in a long time. Maybe it's just because I'm obsessed with Mr. Berry's writings right now, or maybe he's just that good(which he is). I don't know. But he's been one of my favorite authors ever since I read Fidelity: Five Short Stories four or five years ago now. Anyways, here are a few of my favorite quotes from Nathan Coulter.



He left the team standing in front of the barn and came on into the yard. "Hello, boys," he said.
It didn't come out the way it usually did when he said it. It had the same sound as everything that had been said to us for the last three days, as if it were embarrassing to be around people whose mother was dead. So all we said to him was hello.

I can totally relate to the above paragraph. And I think that's one reason why I love Mr Berry's writing so much: he can articulate emotions and experiences that everyone goes through but often never know how to describe.



After awhile he handed the reins to Brother and rolled a cigarette.
"A cigarette is as much of an abomination in the sight of the Lord as a bottle of whiskey," the preacher said.
Uncle Burley lit the cigarette and smoked, looking straight down the road.
The preacher said, "If the Lord had wanted you to smoke He'd have give you a smokestack, brother."
Uncle Burley took the reins again and stopped the team. He looked at the preacher. "If He'd wanted you to ride you'd have wheels," he said. "Now get off."



We went back to the stove and talked again. You couldn't remember how the conversation started, or figure out why it should have got to where it was from the last subject you could remember.



Brother was gone, and he wouldn't be back. And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves...And there was nothing anybody could do but let it happen.



"Look at him sleep," Uncle Burley said. "He's living the good life, ain't he? When I get that old I want somebody to wake me up every once in a while just so I can go back to sleep again."



In a way the spring was like him, a part of his land; I couldn't divide the spring from the notch it had cut in the hill. Grandpa had owned his land and worked on it and taken his pride from it for so long that we knew him, and he knew himself, in the same way that we knew that spring. His life couldn't be divided from the days he'd spent at work in his fields. Daddy had told us we didn't know what the country would look like without him at work in the middle of it; and that was as true of Grandpa as it was of Daddy. We wouldn't recognize the country when he was dead.