Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 7 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

It is amazing how this road-mender has his whole life curled like a kitten around four days in London.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Why, to speak truthfully, Robert, I have taken it in my mind several times—but always there were too many things to think about. I could not take the time to die. If I did, I might not be able to think ever again.

“For up here, Robert, that furtive hope the valley men call faith becomes a questionable thing. Oh, without doubt, if there were a great many about me, and they all intoning endlessly the chant, ‘There is a wise, kind God; surely we shall go on living after death,’ then I might be preparing for the coming life. But here, alone, halfway up the sky, I am afraid that death would interrupt my musing. The mountains are a kind of poultice for a man’s abstract pain. Among them he laughs—oh, far more often than he cries.”

“You know,” said Robert, “my mother, the old Gwenliana, made a last, curious prophecy before she died. ‘This night the world ends,’ she said, ‘and there will be no more earth to walk upon.’”

“Robert, I think she spoke truth. I think her dying words were truth, whatever may have been her other auguries. This gnawing thought comes visiting, sometimes, and because of it I am afraid to die—horribly afraid. If by my living I give life to you, and fresh existence to the fields and trees and all the long green world, it would be an unutterable deed to wipe them all out like a chalk drawing. I must not—yet awhile.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“News of him comes out of the south on a light, inaccurate wind. Rumor has wings like bats. It is said that he rules a wild race of pirates; that he has captured towns and pillaged cities. The English are elated, and call him a hero and a patriotic man—and so do I, sometimes. But I fear if I were a Spaniard, he would be only a successful robber.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“So,” Merlin mused, “he has come to be the great man he thought he wanted to be. If this is true, then he is not a man. He is still a little boy and wants the moon. I suppose he is rather unhappy about it. Those who say children are happy, forget their childhood. I wonder how long he can stave off manhood.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Song on the End of the World”
Czeslaw Milosz
1911-2004 Polish
translated by Anthony Milosz

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.

“Parable”
Wislawa Szymborska
1923- Polish
translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Some fishermen pulled a bottle from the deep. It held a piece of paper, with these words: "Somebody save me! I'm here. The ocean cast me on this desert island. I am standing on the shore waiting for help. Hurry! I'm here!"

"There's no date. I bet it's already too late anyway. It could have been floating for years," the first fisherman said.

"And he doesn't say where. It's not even clear which ocean," the second fisherman said.

"It's not too late, or too far. The island Here is everywhere," the third fisherman said.

They all felt awkward. No one spoke. That's how it goes with universal truths.

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 8 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

He could not clearly remember his desire. But even though this desire should desert him utterly, he must go on. One failure, one moment of indecision, would scatter his successes like pigeons.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“This woman is the harbor of all my questing. I do not think of her as a female thing with arms and breasts, but as a moment of peace after turmoil, a perfume after rancid filth.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

It was monstrous to think that these men could feel as he did. Such a comparison made him, somehow, unworthy.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“This is not all. There are bulls to be loosed against you—against you cattle hunters.” A laugh followed his last words. Many of these men had lived in the jungle and had made their livelihood with hunting wild cattle.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Four in the Morning”
Wislawa Szymborska
1923- Polish
translated by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

The hour from night to day.
The hour from side to side.
The hour for those past thirty.

The hour swept clean to the crowing of cocks.
The hour when earth betrays us.
The hour when wind blows from extinguished stars.
The hour of and-what-if-nothing-remains-after-us.

The hollow hour.
Blank, empty.
The very pit of all other hours.

No one feels good at four in the morning.
If ants feel good at four in the morning
— three cheers for the ants. And let five o'clock come
if we're to go on living.

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 9 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

“And I have heard your words so often and so often in Paris and Cordova. I am tired of these words that never change. Is there some book with which aspiring lovers instruct themselves? The Spanish men say the same things, but their gestures are more practiced, and so a little more convincing. You have much to learn.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“When I heard of you and your blustering up and down the ocean, I thought of you, somehow, as the one realist on an earth of vacillation. I dreamed that you would come to me one day, armed with a transcendent, silent lust, and force my body with brutality. I craved a wordless, reasonless brutality....

“I wanted blind force—blind, unreasoning force—and love not for my soul or for some imagined beauty of my mind, but for the white fetish of my body. I do not want softness. I am soft. My husband uses scented lotions on his hands before he touches me, and his fingers are like thick, damp snails. I want the crush of hard muscles, the delicious pain of little hurts.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“I love you,” he said miserably.

“You speak as though it were some new, tremendous thing. Many men have loved me; hundreds have said they did.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Henry released her and stepped away, wiping his bloody face with the back of his hand. Ysobel laughed at him. A man may beat—may subject to every violation—a woman who cries and runs away, but he is helpless before one who stands her ground and only laughs.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“It is a legend that dying men think of their deeds done. No— No— I think of what I have not done—of what I might have done in the years that are dying with me. I think of the lips of women I have never seen—of the wine that is sleeping in a grape seed—of the quick, warm caress of my mother in Goaves. But mostly I think that I shall never walk about again—never, never stroll in the sunshine nor smell the rich essences the full moon conjures up out of the earth— Sir, why did you do it?”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Six-Word Memoir
Georgene Nunn

Born in the desert, still thirsty.

Six-Word Story
Gregory Maguire
1954- American

Finally, he had no more words.

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 10 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

“I was told that you killed your friend. Is it that which burdens you?”

“I killed him.”

“And do you mourn for him?”

“Perhaps. I do not know. I think I mourn for some other thing which is dead. He might have been a vital half of me, which, dying, leaves me half a man. Today I have been like a bound slave on a white slab of marble with the gathered vivisectors about me. I was supposed to be a healthy slave, but the scalpels found me sick with a disease called mediocrity.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“I think I am sorry because of your lost light; because the brave, brutal child in you is dead—the boastful child who mocked and thought his mockery shook the throne of God; the confident child who graciously permitted the world to accompany him through space. This child is dead, and I am sorry.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“I find I am tired of all this bloodshed and struggle for things that will not lie still, for articles that will not retain their value in my hands. It is horrible,” he cried. “I do not want anything any more. I have no lusts, and my desires are dry and rattling. I have only a vague wish for peace and the time to ponder imponderable matters.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“But I suppose your sins are great. All men who break the bars of mediocrity commit frightful sins.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Six-Word Story
Orson Scott Card
1951- American

The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.

Six-Word Story
David Brin
1950- American

Mind of its own. Damn lawnmower.

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 11 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

Captain Morgan went back to the treasure. He sat on the floor and took the coins into his hands. “The most human of all traits is inconsistency,” he thought. “It is a shock to learn this thing, almost as great a shock to a man as the realization of his humanity.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“But if it is wisdom, then wisdom is experience beating about in an orderly brain, kicking over the files.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“I ordered him to come in here tonight,” said the King. “These sailors and pirates sometimes have a tale or two worth repeating. You’ll be disappointed in him. He is—lumpish, I think is the word. You get the impression that a great mass is planted before you; and he moves as though he pushed his own invisible cage ahead of him.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“There are things which so sear the soul that the pain of it follows through life.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

The King was smiling through his wine.

“How is it, John, that such a great soldier can be such a great fool?”

Said John Evelyn, “How could it be otherwise? If great men were not fools, the world would have been destroyed long ago. How could it be otherwise? Folly and distorted vision are the foundations of greatness.”

“You mean that my vision is distorted?”

“No, I do not mean that.”

“Then you imply—”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Of course he is a fool, Sire, else he would be turning soil in Wales or burrowing in the mines. He wanted something, and he was idiot enough to think he could get it. Because of his idiocy he did get it—part of it.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Civilization will split up a character, and he who refuses to split goes under.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

He wanted to say, “I won’t want to get to heaven once I am dead. I won’t want them to disturb me.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Oaxaca 1925”
Kenneth Rexroth
1905-1982 American

You were a beautiful child
With troubled face, green eyelids
And black lace stockings
We met in a filthy bar
You said
“My name is Nada
I don’t want anything from you
I will not take from you
I will give you nothing”
I took you home down alleys
Splattered with moonlight and garbage and cats
To your desolate disheveled room
Your feet were dirty
The lacquer was chipped on your fingernails
We spent a week hand in hand
Wandering entranced together
Through a sweltering summer
Of guitars and gunfire and tropical leaves
And black shadows in the moonlight
A lifetime ago

Six-Word Story
Richard K. Morgan (Richard Morgan)
1965- British

K.I.A. Baghdad, Aged 18 - Closed Casket

Quotations from *Ragtime*, 1 of 5
E.L. Doctorow
1931- American

She thought: Yet I know these are the happy years. And ahead of us are only great disasters.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

People who did not respond to his art profoundly distressed Houdini. He had come to realize they were invariably of the upper classes. Always they broke through the pretense of his life and made him feel foolish. Houdini had high inchoate ambition and every development in technology made him restless. On the shabby confines of a stage he could create wonder and awe. Meanwhile men were beginning to take planes into the air, or race automobiles that went sixty miles an hour. A man like Roosevelt had run at the Spanish on San Juan Hill and now sent a fleet of white battleships steaming around the world, battleships as white as his teeth. The wealthy knew what was important. They looked on him as a child or a fool.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

She was so desperately in love that she could no longer see properly, something had happened to her eyes, and she blinked constantly as if to clear them of the blur. She saw everything through a film of salt tears, and her voice became husky because her throat was bathed in the irrepressible and continuous crying which her happiness caused her.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

Father kept himself under control by writing in his journal. This was a system too, the system of language and conceptualization. It proposed that human beings, by the act of making witness, warranted times and places for their existence other than the time and place they were living through.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

They made love slowly and sinuously, humping each other into such supple states of orgasm that they found very little reason to talk the rest of the time they were together.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

“Cargoes”
John Masefield
1878-1967 English

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rail, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

Six-Word Story
William Shatner
1931- American

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.

Quotations from *Ragtime*, 2 of 5
E.L. Doctorow
1931- American

Goldman sent off a letter to Evelyn: I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

She sat all day in her attic room and watched the diamond windowpanes as they gathered the light, glowed with it and then gave it up.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

In fact he continued the practice not from vanity but because he discovered the mirror as a means of self-duplication. He would gaze at himself until there were two selves facing one another, neither of which could claim to be the real one. The sensation was of being disembodied. He was no longer anything exact as a person. He had the dizzying feeling of separating from himself endlessly. He would entrance himself so deeply in this process that he would be unable to come out of it even though his mind was lucid. He would have to rely on some outside stimulus, a loud noise or a change in the light coming through the window, to capture his attention and make him whole again.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

He brushed the grass with the tip of his shoe. Exactly six minutes after the car had rolled down the ramp an identical car appeared at the top of the ramp, stood for a moment pointed at the cold early morning sun, then rolled down and crashed into the rear of the first one. Henry Ford had once been an ordinary automobile manufacturer. Now he experienced an ecstasy greater and more intense than that vouchsafed to any American before him, not excepting Thomas Jefferson. He had caused a machine to replicate itself endlessly. His executives and managers and assistants crowded around him to shake his hand. Tears were in their eyes. He allotted sixty seconds on his pocket watch for a display of sentiment. Then he sent everyone back to work.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

“I, Too, Sing America”
Langston Hughes
1902-1967 American

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Six-Word Story
Neal Stephenson
1959- American

Tick tock tick tock tick tick.

Quotations from *Ragtime*, 3 of 5
E.L. Doctorow
1931- American

He had sensed in Ford’s achievement a lust for order as imperial as his own. This was the first sign given to him in some time that he might not be alone on the planet. Pierpont Morgan was that classic American hero, a man born to extreme wealth who by dint of hard work and ruthlessness multiplies the family fortune till it is out of sight. He controlled 741 directorships in 112 corporations. He had once arranged a loan to the United States Government that had saved it from bankruptcy. He had single-handedly stopped the panic of 1907 by arranging for the importation of one hundred million dollars in gold bullion. Moving about in private railroad cars or yachts he crossed all borders and was at home everywhere in the world. He was a monarch of the invisible, transnational kingdom of capital whose sovereignty was everywhere granted. Commanding resources that beggared royal fortunes, he was a revolutionist who left to presidents and kings their territory while he took control of their railroads and shipping lines, banks and trust companies, industrial plants and public utilities. For years he had surrounded himself with parties of friends and acquaintances, always screening them in his mind for the personal characteristics that might indicate less regard for him than they admitted. He was invariably disappointed.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

He heard through his brain the electric winds of an empty universe.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

I have no peers, Morgan said to the bird. It seemed an indisputable truth. Somehow he had catapulted himself beyond the world’s value system. But this very fact lay upon him an awesome responsibility to maintain the illusions of other men.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

He felt if there was something more than he knew, it lay in the past rather than in the present, of whose total bankruptcy of existence he was confident.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

Of course at this time in our history the images of ancient Egypt were stamped on everyone’s mind. This was due to the discoveries being reported out of the desert by British and American archaeologists. After the football players in their padded canvas knee pants and leather helmets, archaeologists were the glamour personages of the universities.
—E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime