Carver Cathedral Quotes

You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?

There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?

I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.

They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving.

She won't give him back his look.

In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well.

Maybe once, maybe years ago, I was a different kind of human being. I've forgotten, I don't know for sure.

In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God

Close your eyes now,' the blind man said to me. I did it. I closed them just like he said. 'Are they closed?' he said. 'Don't fudge.' 'They're closed,' I said. 'Keep them that way,' he said. He said, 'Don't stop now. Draw.' So we kept on with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now. Then he said, 'I think that's it. I think you got it,' he said. 'Take a look. What do you think?' But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do. 'Well?" he said. 'Are you looking?' My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything. 'It's really something,' I said.

But he understood it was over, and he felt able to let her go. He was sure their life together had happened in the way he said it had. But it was something that had passed. And that passing--though it seemed impossible and he'd fought against it--would become part of him now, too, as surely as anything else he'd left behind.

He seemed full of some goodness she didn't understand

He was going somewhere, he knew that. And if it was the wrong direction, sooner or later he'd find it out.

In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God.

Los sueños son eso de lo que uno se despierta.

The men who began their life's work on [the cathedrals], they never lived to see the completion of their work.

Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.

. . . a boy and girl in love, burning with it.

I knocked stuff out of the medicine cabinet. Things rolled into the sink. ‘Where’s the aspirin?’ I said. I knocked down more things. I didn’t care. ‘Goddamn it,’ I said. Things kept falling.

Then i don't know I remembered how he was when he was nineteen, the way he looked, running across this field to where his dad sat on a tractor, hand over his eyes, watching Wes run toward him - Chef's House

The cathedral as a whole is awesome and stirring in spite, and possibly because, of the fact that we have no idea who built it. When we walk through it, we are communing not with individual stone carvers but with an entire culture.

What's that sound?" Fran said. Then something as big as a vulture flapped heavily down from one of the trees and landed just in front of the car.It shook itself.It turned its long neck toward the car, raised its head, and regarded us. "Goddamn it," I said.I sat there with my hands on the wheel and stared at the thing. "Can you believe it?" Fran said."I never saw a real one before." We both knew it was a peacock, sure,but we didn't say the word out loud.We just watched it.The bird turned its head up in the air and made this harsh cry again.It had fluffed itself out and looked about twice the size it'd been when it landed. "Goddamn," I said again. We stayed where we were in the front seat. The bird moved forward a little.Then it turned its head to the side and braced itself.It kept its bright, wild eye right on us.Its tail was raised, and it was like a big fan folding in and out. There was every color in the rainbow shining from that tail. "My God," Fran said quietly.She moved her hand over to my knee. "Goddamn," I said. There was nothing else to say. The bird made this strange wailing sound once more. "May- awe, may-awe!" it went.If it'd been something I was hearing late at night and for the first time, I'd have thought it was somebody dying, or else something wild and dangerous.

Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn’t hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said. Wes fixed his eyes on me. He said, Then I suppose we’d have to be somebody else if that was the case. Somebody we’re not. I don’t have that kind of supposing left in me. We were born who we are. Don’t you see what I’m saying? I said I hadn’t thrown away a good thing and come six hundred miles to hear him talk like this. He said, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk like somebody I’m not. I’m not somebody else. If I was somebody else, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. If I was somebody else, I wouldn’t be me. But I’m who I am. Don’t you see?

I’m just a baker. I don’t claim to be anything else. Maybe once, maybe years ago, I was a different kind of human being. I’ve forgotten, I don’t know for sure.

It came to him that he didn’t want to see the boy after all. He was shocked by this realization and for a moment felt diminished by the meanness of it. He shook his head. In a lifetime of foolish actions, this trip was possibly the most foolish thing he’d ever done. But the fact was, he really had no desire to see this boy whose behavior had long ago isolated him from Myers’s affections. He suddenly, and with great clarity, recalled the boy’s face when he had lunged that time, and a wave of bitterness passed over Myers. This boy had devoured Myers’s youth, had turned the young girl he had courted and wed into a nervous, alcoholic woman whom the boy alternately pitied and bullied. Why on earth, Myers asked himself, would he come all this way to see someone he disliked? He didn’t want to shake the boy’s hand, the hand of his enemy, nor have to clap him on the shoulder and make small-talk. He didn’t want to have to ask him about his mother.

She's meeting herself coming and going.

I’m saying that at the end of the summer she let the blind man run his hands over her face, said good-bye to him, married her childhood etc., who was now a commissioned officer, and she moved away from Seattle.

The woman and the white-haired old man looked at the clock, as if it might tell them something about their situation and what they were supposed to do next.

Mislim da smo završili", rekao je. "Mislim da si je uhvatio. Pogledaj. Šta misliš?" Ali nisam otvorio oči. Hteo sam da ih još malo držim zatvorene. Činilo mi se da tako treba da postupim. "Onda?", rekao je, "Da li gledaš?" Oči su mi i dalje bile sklopljene. Bio sam u svojoj kući. Znao sam. Ali, nisam se osećao kao da sam negde unutra." "To je stvarno nešto", rekoh.

But for some reason—who knows why we do what we do?—his drinking picks up.

He says he can’t understand these people. “People who sail through life like the world owes them a living.

wore a three-piece blue suit, a striped tie, and ivory cufflinks. His gray hair was combed along the sides of his head, and he looked as if he had just come from a concert.

My wife finally took her eyes off the blind man and looked at me. I had the feeling she didn’t like what she saw. I shrugged.

It was only late at night, on the nights he was not with Carol, that he wished for an end to the love he still had for Eileen and felt tormented as to why all of this had happened.

My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything. “It’s really something,” I said.

Something just like it happened to me once, something like what you're describing. Love. That's what it is.