Quotes from Parke Godwin

The soft, fluttering cry of a barn owl rose over the churchyard. Silent men flowed out of the dark.

The day comes when love means something beyond a reflection of ourselves, when there is more behind than ahead and the house of mind is haunted in every chamber with old songs, old ghosts, old hopes.

I've learned and unlearned all my life; it's helped me to survive. There are no constants, nothing is immutable, only random circumstance from which our experience builds a coherent arc of life. And for that arc you have only to be truly done with one thing before moving to another. There's an art in letting go.

Part of what we are is whom we've loved.

Between blow and pain, there is that instant of numbness, an unreal moment...

for one instant, I saw the stars close enough to touch. Closer than that, part of me. Are they really so far or just that we never reach for them?

Love and hell are alike in that respect; they are what you bring to them. The script is yours; only the props are furnished.

I know why men lose sight of the face of God: because it is so close.

Where do the strong go to be weak?

See that day as I remember it. A day in June, River Severn rolling to the sea, diamonded with sunlight, gulls gliding over the quays on a mild breeze that lifted the Red Dragon standard over Camelot. A quiet enough day for the end of my world.

Tomorrow belongs to those who can learn. For those who can't, there's only yesterday.

A while ago in real-time you saw the eagles. And you wished.

You go through it like a dark room, you sweat, you fear, the fear passes, you come out of it and utter nothing but meaningless words about what you saw or felt.

And youth, though they see every day the cradle and grave shaped so alike, never believe death will happen to them. I told you it was a comedy.

Perhaps a moment comes when must is to tired to fight and want breaks free to cry I am just once before the sun goes down.

The soft, fluttering cry of a barn owl rose over the churchyard. Silent men flowed out of the dark.

Religion is what you sing on Sunday. Your true faith is what you want all week.

Lovers have a language that can be lost--how to speak, how to touch, when to try.

We play very dangerous games with life and no one knows our rules.

hear the language, this English, double-jointed as Bedivere's limbs. It only sounds awkward. In its ability to join one concept to another as with pegs, its dependent clauses, figures of speech and cadenced alliteration, a man can say one thing five ways and yet imply a sixth; can change meaning with an inflection, a pause or a deliberate misuse of a word, can mock, scorn and flay an opponent without uttering one overt insult.

She never thought she was that kind of girl; now she knew there wasn't any other.

Neither of us deserves tomorrow.

I am aged with a sickness of the mind.

So we survive, it is the world.