Manly Wade Wellman

“Weather was a-getting ready to happen.”

“Mind your feet, don’t stumble, and don’t be afraid. Because there never was a better time not to be afraid.”

“But if I feared it, I faced up to it anyway. A man’s got to be a man sometime. You show me one who was nair afraid, and I’ll right away show you one that nair in his life came up against aught to fear.”

“I don’t rightly know today whether I was scared at that time. A thing can come along and happen to you, and you don’t have the time to make up your mind if you’re scared, because there’s so almighty much else you’ve got to tend to somehow.”

“Anyway, you think for yourself. And if a man can’t do that, he isn’t really thinking.”

““If you drop a hook in, you’ll get a bite right quick,” I said. “Maybe not the biggest fish, but the best fighter. They’d fight one another to take the hook.”“There’s some sort of parable to that thought,” she said, not air way cheerfully. “How life gives you something you think is good and wholesome, and then uses it to yank you out of your world.””

““But I ain’t made up my mind on hell, not yet. Maybe it’s truly a-burning away, down below our feet, right this minute.”“Or either, the fire down in there is what made folks decide what hell was.””

“By now the rain rushed down instead of fell down. It was like what my old folks used to call raining tomcats and hoe handles.”

“Got some dirty tricks? If that’s how it is, you done drove your ducks to the wrong puddle.”