Literature Notes

link to back cover

SUMMARY of the session: This book gave me a much better appreciation of both Japanese history in the 12 century as well as a much better sense of Japanese culture and the role of honor among the samurai. It also shows how a Buddhist perspective permeates both. I am glad to have finally read this book, which I have had for a few years.

 

Literature Notes

link to back cover

Some quotes:

• "And he quoted Thoreau: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately." [p. 35]
  
  
• "What William Blake wrote: He whose face gives no light will never become a star. I subscribe to this, though it's not the entire story. If you are full of light then you must be aware that smaller lights are intimidated. Light attracts but also makes people close their eyes. An so it's never enough to be large and generous. A star must permit smaller lights to shine. This is something I did not know until I was in my forties. I was a brash young light who read Blake." [p. 42]
  
  
• "This is my book, this will to know." [p. 74]
  
  
• "When you entered the woods the wind died down." [p. 75]
  
  
• "An empty craft, Kent, always looms high." [p. 79]
  
  
• "Only then did I see the distance. How far Tom Dobie had to walk each morning to work for me. When I mentioned it he said, Dont worry, a man's got to think." [p. 82]
  
  
• "The soup was yellow and the broth was full of golden globes of oil. ... When the soup turned lukewarm all its happiness sank to the bottom." [p. 83 - 84]
  
  
• "Mrs. Dobie was the kind of woman who spoke her mind before all the information had been presented. She got to a onclusion quickly, and while this may have been seen as presumptuous and ignorant, if you kinew her you'd see how right she was and how her perception paid off. You would come to appreciate her honest sizing-up of a character or a predicament." [p. 84 - 85]
  
  
• "There's something dead in the telling of time." [p. 95]
  
  
• "Nothing useful can come of looking at what youre doing as anything other than a necessity for survival. As soon as you look at your work as something outside of you, then it's gone from you. Youre not part of it. You have to be a part of it." [p. 113]
  
  
• "I was reluctant to instruct my children on how to draw. I left materials out for them. There were pots of hard watercolours, lots of paper, crayons, and brushes. I let them mangle cheap brushes. But I would not tell them how to paint. I fthey asked a question I would be honest. I remember Rocky asking me once about the face. I said, Often people draw the face too big." [p. 147]
  
  
• "Kathleen was trying to absorb Brigus. She had a camera, and she photographed the town. It made her seem less attached to the place. More of a witness." [p. 150]
  
  
• "We were so theoretical in those days. We thought we could control the heart." [p. 161]
  
  
• "The important thing is for change in belief to occur. ... A person with no change is not searching." [p. 165]
  
  
• "But the thing is, it's terrific to choose to get up early. This has to do with control, of course. In deciding what one wants to do." [p. 238]
  
  
• "And the colour. I can spend a lot of time looking at the shadow falling on the ground and wonder what that colour is." [p. 250]
  
  
• "Nostalgia is the friction between home itself and the memory of home." [p. 270]
  
  
• "The question, Rockwell, is did you get to be who you are. And if not, then why. That, my friend, is the big why." [p. 372]
  
  

SUMMARY of the session: Winter's language sparkles with Newfoundland dialect, but I thought the novel tailed off in the last quarter.