Kent Taylor Quotes

Jonathan Kent: I fear a day may come when the world needs to be saved from our son. All I ask is that, on that day—you find a way to save him too.

I didn’t “teach” Ron Hansen or Stephen Wright or T. Coraghessan Boyle or Susan Taylor Chehak or Allan Gurganus or Gail Harper or Kent Haruf or Robert Chibka or Douglas Unger how to write, but I hope I may have encouraged them and saved them a little time. I did nothing more for them than Kurt Vonnegut did for me, but in my case Mr. Vonnegut—and Mr. Yount and Mr. Williams—did quite a lot. I’m talking about technical blunders, the perpetration of sheer boredom, point-of-view problems, the different qualities of first-person and third-person voice, the deadening effect of exposition in dialogue, the crippling limitations of the present tense, the intrusions upon narrative momentum caused by puerile and pointless experimentation—and on and on.

He may understand teeth, but he has no clue how the mind works.

She stopped, dazed. “Who are these two?” she asked Taylor. “We, uh, found them loitering around,” Taylor said. “We thought maybe they were the perpetrators.” For a second, Mrs. Kent stared at us as though we were pieces in a puzzle she couldn’t put together. “These

Few have lived as stressful and frenetic a life as Hudson Taylor, founder of China Inland Mission. But Taylor lived in God’s rest, as his son beautifully attests: Day and night this was his secret, “just to roll the burden on the Lord.” Frequently those who were wakeful in the little house at Chinkiang might hear, at two or three in the morning, the soft refrain of Mr. Taylor’s favorite hymn [“Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy of what Thou art”]. He had learned that for him, only one life was possible — just that blessed life of resting and rejoicing in the Lord under all circumstances, while He dealt with the difficulties, inward and outward, great and small.6 Fellow-Christians, there is a rest for you. It is not beyond your capacity. You can have it if you wish.

Now the Big Bad Wolf has shown up, and he’s going to eat out Little Red Riding Hood.” “He doesn’t do that in the version my father used to read to me at bedtime.” “This is Xavier’s Version. It’s like when Taylor Swift re-recorded Speak Now.

You like Taylor Swift?” She arches an eyebrow in disbelief. “Yeah. The whole ten-minute scarf song is great. All Too Sad or whatever,” I wave my hand around to make my point. Kaye sighs as if she knew I was pulling her leg the entire time. “It’s All Too Well,” she corrects.

On September 1, Sondland made it clear to the Ukrainians that unless they made an explicit promise to pursue the Burisma investigation—into the alleged ties between Joe Biden’s son Hunter and the energy company Burisma in Ukraine—the funds would not be released. That same day, Taylor told Kent that Sondland had been as explicit in his communications with the Ukrainians as to say that Trump wanted Zelenskyy at a microphone voicing the words “investigations,” “Biden,” and “Clinton.” The Washington Post would report the shakedown attempt four days later, on September 5. Still, Sondland kept pressuring the government of Ukraine. Taylor confronted Sondland, saying: “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.