Quotes from Paulette Jiles

Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune, the London Times, the New-York Herald, and El Clarion, a

The Lord sends to each of us some chastisement. Some burden, so that we may turn to him.

In her daily company he found himself also ceasing to value these things that seemed so important to the white world.

It is the fate of all authors to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides." And

They had a red scalp and two blond scalps, very long ones that waved and shook in the wind, and in that hair was the soul of the enemy held tight, tight. There was light all around them and all around their war horses and it was as beautiful and dangerous as the color of lightning.

He was going to have somebody reading the evening news to him for quite some time.

your husbands having been both of old Georgia State regiments would be true to their comrades and so it was fate and the Will of the Almighty had led you all to go back to Georgia to fight in the War and thus into the heart of the Burning but considering what has occurred to other families we return thanks for our dear ones who are still with us. I know travel is extremely difficult at present but once you are here things will be better.

And he gave me a fifty-dollar gold piece to deliver her back to Castroville.

dreadful loss of status in the world. In his world. Loss of reputation and the regard of our fellow persons is in any society, from Iceland to East Indies, a terrible blow to the spirit. It is worse than being penniless and more cutting than the blades of enemies.

the strange questing feeling that comes from abandonment, that were he to keep on searching about in his mind and memory he would find someone or something to comfort him. The

They are mentally not very fast. They are every one of them one brick short of a load.

Writing was the same, the pinching of thoughts into marks on paper and trying to keep your cursive legible, trying to think of the next thing to say and then behind you on several sheets of paper you find you have left permanent tracks, a trail, upon which anybody could follow you. Stalking you through your deep woods of private thought. Adair

We spend our lives in worlds remote from one another. We imagine we all live together on this round earth but we do not." Samuel

I will ask here and there. Perhaps some other bands have some captives. Samuel was silent when he heard this translated. The silence lay between them like a delicate invisible structure that no one wanted to disturb. And finally Samuel said that he would withhold all rations until they were brought in, and if not, he had the soldiers at his orders. Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 293). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

as they drifted they had gathered trouble and a great deal of peculiar knowledge about human beings, what human beings would do or say under extreme duress. It was not something you could do anything with but it interested them all the same.

Toshana said they had no captives either. That if the agent wanted them to stop taking captives he should tell the army to come to them and they would settle it by force. But that was the only way it would ever be settled. He smiled as he said it. Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 294). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

This is how people wanted to appear to the world and to later generations. It is how they wished to be remembered no matter how hard life might have become. They framed themselves in their best clothes and with their most valuable possessions and smiled. Hard times and collapsing marriages and heavy labor was nobody's business but their own.

I have come to warn you. The Texans are now Americans. So are the people of New Mexico. They have all become Americans and they are under American law. This is the last time. You will stop raiding and you will bring in the captives. If not I will send the soldiers." Toshana laughed. But you are Gai-ker. You do not fight. "You will see." Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 296). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

At the age he had attained with his life span short before him he had begun to look upon the human world with the indifference of a condemned man. Who cares for your fashions and your wars and your causes? I will shortly be gone and I have seen many fashions come and go and many causes so passionately defended only to be forgotten.

No. Absolutely not. No. No scalping. He lifted her up and swung her up over the ledges of stone and then followed. He said, It is considered very impolite.

there was only one prison in Texas, and that was in Huntsville, but it was a place for hardened criminals and those who had used firearms to deprive others of their goods and savings, who had shot somebody in a political argument, had chopped up other people into tiny bits, that's the kind of people they send to Huntsville.

She said, The cards care nothing for politics or the war of the Rebellion, nor General Lee nor General Meade. Only the war in the human heart. The forced marches of overweening emotions. The artillery of love. Piercings. Ambushes. The

a country tamed and torn with plows and weighted down with stone buildings.

He said he had a message to deliver, contents unknown.