Great Plains Quotes

So think of the American Great Plains as one more reminder that we can find home again. ~ Dan Flores

The mythic American character is made up of the virtues of fairness, self-reliance, toughness, and honesty. Those virtues are generally stuffed into a six-foot-tall, dark-haired, can-do kind of guy who is at once a family man, attractive to strange women, carefree, stable, realistic, and whimsical. in the lore of America, that man lives on the Great Plains. he's from Texas, Dodge City, Cheyenne, the Dakotas, or somewhere in Montana. In fact, the seedbed of this American character, from the days of de Tocqueville through Andrew Jackson, Wyattt Earp, Pony Express riders, pioneers, and cowboys to modern caricatures played by actors such as Tom Mix, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne has aways been the frontier. It's a place with plenty of room to roam, great sunsets, clear lines between right and wrong, and lots of horses. It's also a place that does not exist and never has. The truth is that there has never been much fairness out here. ~ Dan O'Brien

Connie Madison Parker, age 36, on Merchandise: You got to put your
goods on display, babe. Otherwise, not only will the boys ignore you but - an'
trust me on this, my sister's flat as you - we're talkin' the Great Plains of East Texas - no landmarks - one day you'll look down and have no wares at all.
What'll you do then? ~ Marisha Pessl

As a young girl, I saw commitment in my grandmother, who helped Grandpa homestead our farm on the Kansas prairie. Somehow they outlasted the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and the tornadoes that terrorize the Great Plains. ~ Sheri L. Dew

It's hard to think of the divide where I grew up as a watershed. The creeks are dry most of the year, rainfall is undependable at best, and folks in one river system are always trying to steal water from another. ~ Faith A. Colburn

Windmills, which are used in the great plains of Holland and North Germany to supply the want of falling water, afford another instance of the action of velocity. The sails are driven by air in motion - by wind. ~ Hermann Von Helmholtz

[..] neoproletariat caste, the future cybercattle of neurocracy, joyous sophisticate of the always-incomplete chain of predation, primed by silos of soya, stocks of onions, pork bellies…and completed by the global apotheosis of the Great Futures Market of neurolivestock, more volatile (and more profitable) than all the livestock of the Great Plains. Neurolivestock certainly enjoy an existence more comfortable than serfs or millworkers, but they do not easily escape their destiny as the self-regulating raw material of a market as predictable and as homogeneous as a perfect gas, a matter counted in atoms of distress, stripped of all powers of negotiation, renting out their mental space, brain by brain. ~ Gilles Châtelet

I quietly quaffed my cognac, discreetly admiring Lana's legs. Longer than the Bible and a hell of a lot more fun, they stretched forever, like an Indian yogi or an American highway shimmering through the Great Plains or the southwestern desert. Her legs demanded to be looked at and would not take no, non, nein, nyet, or even maybe for an answer. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

Here above the farms and ranches of the Great Plains aviation lives up to the promise that inspired dreamers through the ages. Here you are truly separate from the earth, at least for a little while, removed from the cares and concerns that occupy you on the ground. This separation from the earth is more than symbolic, more than a physical removal-it has an emotional dimension as tangible as the wood, fabric, and steel that has transported you aloft. ~ Stephen Coonts

It seems to me nothing man has done or built on this land is an improvement over what was here before. ~ Kent Haruf

Mike Forsberg's images give us bright openings onto a world ... Here on the Great Plains both people and trees and everything else are in some way shaped by wind and weather. This book, too, has been shaped by where it comes from, and that's just a part of its beauty. ~ Ted Kooser

In 'Hokey Pokey,' bikes are kind of more than bikes alone. They become mustangs; they become creatures that rip up the dust as they gallop across the Great Plains. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Ecology is beginning to slowly shift focus with tentative explorations of what the world would look like if process, rather than matter were the basis for reality What if we defined a species in terms of its life processes? We might seriously doubt whether the California condor or the tall grass prairie can be 'saved' or even 'restored.' Perhaps we can re-create some local conditions that foster a few nests of condors or a few acres of prairie. But the life process of the condor ended with the urbanization of the California foothills and the living ebb and flow of the tall grass prairies died with the plowing of the Great Plains. What if we suggested that a thing is what it does? In this light, the Rocky Mountain locust was a immense aperiodic energy flow that linked life processes on a continental scale.

This notion of life-as-process might seem unusual in a society in which material existence is primary. But such a perception informs our deepest understanding of life. Indeed, life-as-process underlies our notion of euthanasia. When loved ones are simply bodies, devoid of the capacity to care, respond, or relate again a away that we can recognize as being "them," we understand that they are gone even before they are dead. ~ Jeffrey A. Lockwood

Riding in advance, we passed over one of these great plains; we looked back and saw the line of scattered horsemen stretching for a mile or more; and far in the rear against the horizon, the white wagons creeping slowly along. ~ Francis Parkman

When at the typewriter I am no longer where I site but am away across the mountains, in ancient cities or on the Great Plains among the buffalo. Often I think of what pitiful fools are those who use mind-altering drugs to seek feelings they do not have, each drug taking a little more from what they have of mind, leaving them a little less. Give the brain encouragement from study, from thinking, from visualizing, and no drugs are needed. ~ Louis L'Amour

Look at walls splashed with a number of stains, or stones of various mixed colours. If you have to invent some scene, you can see there resemblances to a number of landscapes, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys and hills, in various ways. Also you can see various battles, and lively postures of strange figures, expressions on faces, costumes and an infinite number of things, which you can reduce to good integrated form. This happens on such walls and varicoloured stones, (which act) like the sound of bells, in whose peeling you can find every name and word that you can imagine.
Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. The mind of the painter is
stimulated to new discoveries, the composition of battles of animals and men, various compositions of landscapes and monstrous things, such as devils and similar things, which may bring you honor, because by indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Twelve states in the Great Plains have a wind energy potential greater then the electric use of our entire nation. ~ Michael Pare

For all its outwardly easy Latin charm, Buenos Aires was making me feel sick and upset, so I did take that trip to the great plains where the gaucho epics had been written, and I did manage to eat a couple of the famous asados: the Argentine barbecue fiesta (once summarized by Martin Amis's John Self as 'a sort of triple mixed grill swaddled in steaks') with its slavish propitiation of the sizzling gods of cholesterol. Yet even this was spoiled for me: my hosts did their own slaughtering and the smell of drying blood from the abattoir became too much for some reason (I actually went 'off' steak for a good few years after this trip). Then from the intrepid Robert Cox of the Buenos Aires Herald I learned another jaunty fascist colloquialism: before the South Atlantic dumping method was adopted, the secret cremation of maimed and tortured bodies at the Navy School had been called an asado. In my youth I was quite often accused, and perhaps not unfairly, of being too politicized and of trying to import politics into all discussions. I would reply that it wasn't my fault if politics kept on invading the private sphere and, in the case of Argentina at any rate, I think I was right. The miasma of the dictatorship pervaded absolutely everything, not excluding the aperitifs and the main course. ~ Christopher Hitchens

As we advance in the spiritual life and in the practice of systematic self-examination we are often surprised by the discovery of vast unknown tracts of the inner life of the soul. They seem like great plains stretching out in mystery and wrapt in mists that sometimes for a moment lift, or sweep off and leave one looking for one brief instant upon great reaches of one's own life, unknown, unmeasured, unexplored. Men stand at such moments breathless in wonder and in awe gazing upon these great tracts upon which they have never looked before, with kindling eyes and beating hearts; and while they look the mists steal back till all is lost to sight once more and they are left wondering if what they saw was reality, or the creation of their fancy. Or sometimes they see, not far-stretching plains which fill the soul with an awestruck sense of its expansiveness and of how much has been left absolutely uncultivated, not these plains but mountain peaks climbing and reaching upwards till lost in the heavens, echoing it may be with the voice of many streams whose waters fertilize and enrich those small tracts of the soul's life which have been reclaimed and cultivated and which many a man has thought to be his whole inner self, though he never asked himself whence those rich streams had their source. Now he sees how their source lay in unmeasured heights of his own inner being whose existence he never dreamed of before. In one brief instant they have unveiled themselves. He looks again, ~ Basil W. Maturin

It's okay,baby!" he shouted after her. "I don't need eyes to see you! I see you with the eyes of my heart, Felicia! My HEART!"
Great. Not only was my spell too strong, it was also lame. ~ Rachel Hawkins

Even the great walls of Tar Valon, beyond the range of any siege catapult not on a barge, and worked with the Power till the largest catapult could not mark them in any case, might as well be made of paper against an army that could Travel. But whether Gareth Bryne had learned or not, other men would seize on that idea. The Asha'man already had, it seemed. War had always been ugly, yet it was going to grow uglier. ~ Robert Jordan

I was impressed by Hendrix. Not so much by his playing, as his attitude - he wasn't a great player, but everything else about him was brilliant. ~ Ritchie Blackmore

I approach film no differently than I approach a role. I want to make sure the movie is right, the characters are right, I can really bring something to it as a visionary, a storyteller. It's great to point a camera, but can you tell a story? ~ Larenz Tate

Confrontation simply means meeting the truth head-on. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding ... and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to be ... . But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. ~ Noam Chomsky

The great question, whether man is of nature or above her. ~ George Perkins Marsh

I'm having a great life. And I'm 73 and they still phone me up and ask me to do a job here and there. ~ Anthony Hopkins

From Plato: the man who has an elevated mind and takes a view of all time and of all substance, dost thou suppose it possible for him to think that human life is anything great? It is not possible, he said. Such a man then will think that death also is no evil. ~ Marcus Aurelius

We feel very honored to have been offered the responsibility to host this great event, Berlin is a wonderful city that is developing at a tremendous rate, and this decision means that we can now prepare to welcome the world's best athletes to a fascinating place. ~ Otto Schily

Life is great and golf has been one of the great parts of it for me. ~ George Lopez

My father was and is a great journalist. Thirty years ago, I was studying broadcasting in college, and the problem was I wasn't nearly as good as my father. I wasn't as quick or as smart as my old man, and I realized it would be a long time before I was ever going to be, and I decided to do something else. ~ George Clooney

It's great to meet people in a setting where it's really conducive to hanging out and having
fun. Most film festivals are really low-stress, and good times to hang out with buddies and talk about what you're working on and come up with new ideas. ~ Joe Swanberg

I've made great friends through acting. When I'm with Victoria Wood and Julie Walters, we have grand fun. We can make each other howl with laughter because we know each other so well. ~ Celia Imrie

On the TV a politician Attila recognised was speaking. He was a heavyweight man wearing a suit that looked like a huge black bag. His hair was parted low on one side from where the mass of it surged forward lika an ocean braker onto the beach of his forehead where it was cast backwards onto the crown of his head, finally spilling over the back of his collar. That he was vexed was evidenced by the way he held up his hand, thumb and forefinger formed into the shape of an O which almost exactly mirrored the shape of his mouth; his face seemed to pulsate with fury. (...) Attila strained to listen. He had seen the politician on television before, had been compelled by his speech patterns, marked by half-sentences, the man left one thought unfinished as he rushed on to the next, he talked about himself in the third person. He raged, he shouted. All that, plus the laquered hair. Many politicians were narcissists, it came with the territory, the self-belief required. Narcissists weren't so bad, most great artists were narcissists too. This man though, in Attila's professional opinion, displayed many of the traits of hypomania. ~ Aminatta Forna

They wonder much to hear that gold which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has value, should yet be thought of less value than this metal. That a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has a great heap of that metal ... ~ Thomas More

Bisexuals are really attracted to senior Lib Dems - as they are both a man and a great big pussy. ~ Frankie Boyle

[D]espite her alternative leanings, it turned out Crystal was not particularly psyco-babbly or airy-fairy or tree-huggy, as one might have expected.
In fact, the first thing she did was write a list. She said writing lists helped calm her down when she was stressed about anything because it put problems in order. You can look at a list of things and see how you can tackle each one separately without feeling sick about it, she said. Whereas if they all just stayed jumbled in your mind in one great bit sticky ball you never got to consider them individually.
She actually spoke a lot of sense for someone with toe rings and a Chinese tattoo. ~ Sarah-Kate Lynch

Acid filled Sara's mouth.

It wasn't fair.

That's what Sara wanted to say. To scream at the top of her lungs.

It just wasn't fair.

Lena wasn't strong. She would bend, not break. She would recover from this tragedy the same easy way she recovered from every other tragedy before.

Even if she lost Jared, Lena would always know what it felt like to have his child growing inside of her. She could always hold her baby's hand and think of holding Jared's. She could see her child laugh and learn and grow and play sports and do school projects and graduate from college and Lena would always, always remember her husband. She would see Jared in her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On her deathbed, she would find peace in the knowledge that they had made something beautiful together. That even in death, they would both go on living.

"Sara," Faith said. "What's happening here?"

Sara wiped her eyes, angry that she was back in the same dark place she'd started at this morning. "Why does everything come so damn easy to her?" She struggled to speak. Her throat clenched around every word that wanted to come out of her mouth. "Everything just opens up, and she always walks through unscathed and - " Sara had to stop for breath. "It's just so easy for her. She always has it so goddamn easy. ~ Karin Slaughter

Justice is justly represented blind, because she sees no difference in the parties concerned. She has but one scale and weight, for rich and poor, great and small. ~ William Penn

This was the great benefit of seeing worse. Fewer things worried him now. ~ Louise Penny

When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, "I kill people." This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from my seat-mate. Only peace and quiet. Rare is the fellow passenger who asks why I do it.

I suppose I got tired hanging out in a book all day waiting for a story to begin. I write the kind of novels I want to read. And why the theme of solving murders? Violent death is larger than life and it's the great equalizer. By law, every victim is entitled to a paladin and a chase, else life would be cheapened.

And the real reason I do this? My brain is simply bent this way. There is nothing else I would rather do. This neatly chains into my theory of the writing life. If you scratch an artist, under the skin you will find a bum who cannot hold down a real job. Conversely, if you scratch a bum... but I have never done that.

The heart of my theory has puritan roots: if you love what you do, you cannot call it honest work. ~ Carol O'Connell

Technology is great...when it works. ~ Bobby Darnell

God is great.
God is glorious. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

By the second week of November 1990, a new character had begun to spring forth in Kurt's journal writings, and this figure would soon make its way into almost every image, song, or story. He intentionally misspelled its name, and in doing so he was granting it a life of its own. Oddly, he gave it a female persona, but since it became his great love that Fall - and even made him throw up, just like Tobi - there was a fairness in this gender choice. He called it 'heroine'. ~ Charles R. Cross

There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist. ~ Erica Jong

Moody had no small genius for the art of diplomacy. As a child he had known instinctively that it was always better to tell a partial truth with a willing aspect than to tell a perfect truth in a defensive way. The appearance of cooperation was worth a great deal, if only because it forced a reciprocity, fair met with fair. ~ Eleanor Catton

Columbia was a wonderful label for me. Wonderful. The records I made there garnered me an audience. I won a number of polls during the years that I was at Columbia. The Downbeat Jazz Poll. Leonard Feather, who was a huge critic back in the day, different polls that he had. The Playboy poll, a number of polls. So the music was great. ~ Aretha Franklin

Religion is not a bridge between God and Man; it is the Great Wall of China between them! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

There is no "letting go." I would dare to take it further and say there is no healing from trauma. For nearly 25 years, I've waited to get over the traumas that have amassed across my life. The pursuit of this healing has felt a great deal like a search for God - for something elusive, divine, and that may or may not exist. ~ L.M. Browning

when one goes about God's work, Satan sets up great barriers, but if one abides by the Father, He will draw together like-minded brethren. ~ Ginny Aiken

Say, 'Thank you, Phin.' "
"Oh, please."
"Say, Thank youvery much, Phin. "
"I don't think so."
"Say, 'You are a great lover, Phin.' "
"I'm out of here. ~ Jennifer Crusie

The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors. ~ Stella Adler

I love the NBA playoffs. It's just a great mental test for each team.
When it's really close, usually one team pulls together, and the other team comes apart. ~ Doc Rivers

The great truth is that women actually like men, and men can never believe it. ~ Isabel Paterson

Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we put our trust in the common sense of common men and 'with malice toward none and charity for all' go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail. ~ Henry A. Wallace

So while it is great to celebrate on a day dedicated to moms, I urge each of you, to ALWAYS be good to the woman who is so good to you. Honor your mothers EVERY DAY by letting her know she is the real MVP in your life. ~ Carlos Wallace

Puce Women was my love affair with Hollywood ... with all the great goddesses of the silent screen. They were to be filmed in their homes; I was, in effect, filming ghosts. ~ Kenneth Anger