Harry Middleton Quotes

Rivers course through my dreams, rivers cold and fast, rivers well-known and rivers nameless, rivers that seem like ribbons of blue water twisting through wide valleys, narrow rivers folded in layers of darkening shadow, rivers that have eroded down deep in a mountain's belly, sculpted the land, peeled back the planet's history exposing he texture of time itself.

The boy reported - after the Sergeant had slept for a few hours, which was not nearly enough - that YouTube had actually gone down for ten minutes under the weight of traffic. The story was truly global, truly immense: not Obama, not Justin Bieber, not Psy and not Bin Laden had ever touched this, he said. Not Khaled Saeed and not Mohamed Bouazizi, either. If Pippa Middleton and Megan Fox had announced their intention to marry during a live theatrical production of 50 Shades of Grey starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and then taken off their clothes to reveal their bodies tattooed with the text of the eighth Harry Potter novel, they might have approached this level of frenzy. But probably not, the boy said, because not everyone liked Benedict Cumberbatch.

It’s been said that we pass through life with a diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms. My problem is having had so many to start out with. Now, at the age of fifty-six, I have painting, my four beautiful children, fly casting, writing, friends, wing shooting, printing, family and extended family, cooking, and Marusia, the light of my life, not at all necessarily in that order. The problem, if you want to call it that, is there is no time left for things that don’t matter. Years ago, after watching someone waste endless hours on some pointless project, Tom McGuane observed that the fellow obviously believed the average human lifetime to be ten thousand years. I’m treating it as if there were less than a minute to go.

If Pippa Middleton and Megan Fox had announced their intention to marry during a live theatrical production of Fifty Shades of Grey starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and then taken off their clothes to reveal their bodies tattooed with the text of the eighth Harry Potter novel, they might just have approached this level of frenzy. But probably not, the boy said, because not everyone liked Benedict Cumberbatch.

In stark contrast to William’s mother, Kate had never come close to moving in aristocratic circles, much less royal ones. She was an untitled commoner, a descendant of coal miners and factory workers. Kate’s mother, Carole, grew up partly in public housing and was working as a British Airways flight attendant when she met and married fellow airline employee Michael Middleton.

If J.K. Rowling had given up after her first 12 rejections there would be no Harry Potter and she wouldn’t be richer than the Queen of England. If The Beatles had believed the record company that said, ‘the Beatles have no future in show business’ there’d have been four fewer mop-topped millionaires. And if the 65-year-old Colonel Sanders had decided to retire after losing his first business and having his secret recipe rejected by a rumoured 1009 potential restaurant partners, there’d be a whole lot less finger lickin’ chicken going round.

I am The Black Book. Between my top and my bottom, my right and my left, I hold what I have seen, what I have done, and what I have thought. I am everything I have hated: labor without harvest; death without honor; life without land or law. I am a black woman holding a white child in her arms singing to her own baby lying unattended in the grass. I am all the ways I have failed: I am the black slave owner, the buyer of Golden Peacock Bleach Crème and Dr. Palmer’s Skin Whitener, the self- hating player of the dozens; I am my own nigger joke. I am all the ways I survived: I am tun-mush, hoecake cooked on a hoe; I am Fourteen black jockeys winning the Kentucky Derby. I am the creator of hundreds of patented inventions; I am Lafitte the pirate and Marie Laveau. I am Bessie Smith winning a roller-skating contest; I am quilts and ironwork, fine carpentry and lace. I am the wars I fought, the gold I mined, The horses I broke, the trails I blazed. I am all the things I have seen: The New York Caucasian newspaper, the scarred back of Gordon the slave, the Draft Riots, darky tunes, and mer- chants distorting my face to sell thread, soap, shoe polish coconut. And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing. I am the sound of my own voice singing “Sangaree.” I am ring-shouts, and blues, ragtime and gospels. I am mojo, voodoo, and gold earrings. I am not complete here; there is much more, but there is no more time and no more space . . . and I have journeys to take, ships to name, and crews.

Just another rite of passage, another of childhood’s puzzling and uncertain moments. American writers are mesmerized by childhood, the quizzical journey from innocence to adulthood. What a journey it is, too: precarious and wonderful; frightening and alluring; delightful and tragic. Not one journey, but many, and every one of them different. I am told that money and privilege sometimes make for a smoother passage. I would not know. I only know about being a soldier’s son: the military life and the unexpected fortunes such a life brings. Luck has a lot to do with it, and I was lucky in that my luck went sour early and put me on another road altogether, a road that took me deep into the mountains, a road that led to a trout stream and into the curious and captivating lives of three old men who, by having so little, laid claim to having everything that mattered, was worthwhile, and would last.