What is a good man if not one who does not believe in himself to the exclusion of others? ... He was asked to bear what cannot be borne--what should not be borne. I hope never to be so tested, for I have it on the best authority that I will not bear it.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Courage Fortitude High Cost Of Morality Personal Integrity Strength Of Character Strength Through Adversity

Anna and I did not make love. I don't remember why. Maybe we didn't need to. She might have been afraid, although I doubt she was afraid of much. She'd been a midwife before she opened a studio; she'd held life in her hands, like a wire from a galvanic cell. Maybe death was too strong in me for an act so inspirited with life. Although I sometimes think that death is what gives lovemaking its desperate and terrible joy.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Passion True Love Unrequited Love

I would prefer to believe that things possess the power of recall, of recollection. That things are memoirs of the existences that once were theirs, if only we knew how to read them.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Fear Of Death Huck Finn Life Is Fleeting Literary Character Appropriation Memory Psychometry Remembrance

While I knew him, he made me see--Poe did; made me understand that, unlike a bodily organ, the soul desires, even wills, its own continuance.It can be said to be the seat of will and desire and, even in its necrotic state, the root of evil. ... A Sunday school lesson or one of Cotton Mather's gaudy rants that helped to kindle the Salem bonfires is nearer to the truth of it than a fable by Poe, Hawthorne, or Melville. Evil's a malignancy beyond the skill and scalpel of {doctors} to heal or extirpate.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock American Meteor Cotton Mather Edgar Allan Poe Evil Thomas Moran

Hatred is unattractive, but it's also irresistible. If men were honest with themselves, they'd admit it's a stronger passion than lust.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Hate Huck Finn Human Nature Human Passion Literary Character Appropriation Lust

To ennoble is to diminish by robbing people of their complexity, their completeness, of their humanity, which is always clouded by what gets stirred up at the bottom.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock False Nobility Huck Finn Human Nature Literary Character Appropriation Nostalgie De La Boue

Even now, when I have time to consider what I've been and what I am, I doubt I comprehend my humanity, if I can claim so grand a word for my own morsel of life. I might as well be a meteor of a man, for all the difference I've made on earth.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Humility Man S Place In Nature Man S Search For Meaning Self Analysis

While my father was out boozing, she'd read to me by the stub of a candle, a thread of soot twisting upwards from its pinched, meager flame. By her voice alone, she could raise up the old stories from the bones of their words and--lilting between shades of comedy and melodrama--turn the dreary space around me into a stage for my wildest imaginings.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Magical Childhood Memories Mother And Child Storytelling

I hammered on the Poes' front door like Alaric on the gates of Rome. Poe said that a gaudy figure of speech was a silk cravat around a dirty neck. He didn't say whether the truth lay in the plain thing or in its fancy.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Black Humor Fantasy Overpowering Reality Gallows Humor Revenge

Forgive me,' Poe repeated earnestly.I nodded coldly. I was not above acting like a child; I was hardly more tha

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Edgar Allan Poe Making Up Materialism

Talking of appearances, I would like my future readers to know that the picture of Jim and me that Thomas Hart Benton painted on the wall of the Missouri state capitol bears not the slightest resemblance to either one of us. ... I've never been satisfied with any representation of myself and have seen only one picture of Jim that did him justice. I don't know why this should be, unless it is evidence of a nearly universal prejudice against us, instigated by Sunday school superintendents, Republicans, and bigots.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Bigotry Conservative Fascist Nexus Huck Finn Image Vs Appearance Literary Character Appropriation Prejudice Self Image

At his request--a Custer request was a command impossible to refuse--I produced a series of prints for the Centennial Expedition at Philadelphia: the general with Bloody Knife, his favorite Indian scout; with the Custers' pack of eighty dogs; with his junior officers, planning the destruction of the Lakota Sioux; with Libbie in the parlor of their quarters at the fort; and the general striking a pose that would become as recognizable as Napoléon's; arms folded across his chest, looking forward and slightly upward at his magnificent destiny.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Arrogance Fame Seeker Wages Of Sin War Criminal

I insist on caprice as a necessary countermeasure to slavery. Otherwise, my own dictatorial mind must take -- unknown to me -- its instructions from a mastermind.

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Caprice Free Will Huck Finn Literary Character Appropriation Persona

For all my wanderings, I'm ordinary. I came to terms long ago with my littleness. A man is what he is--he can't rise so much as an inch above his shortcomings--Horatio Alger be damned!

~ Norman Lock

Norman Lock Average Joe Self Image Self Knowledge