In wisdom I should ask thy name,
But since thy outside looks so fair and warlike,
And that thy tongue some say of breeding breathes,
What safe and nicely I might well delay
By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn.
“She would never leave her mark on Mammy’s heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy’s heart was like a pallid beach where Laila’s footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.”
“Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as “our brothers’ keepers,” possessed of one of the oldest and possibly one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting of instincts. It will not let us go.”
“It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.”
“But still there are moments when a brother and sister can lay down their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.”
“Yet, it was clear that, for them, I was only Sonny’s brother. Here, I was in Sonny’s world. Or rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood.”
“He and Sonny hadn’t ever got on too well. And this was partly because Sonny was the apple of his father’s eye. It was because he loved Sonny so much and was frightened for him, that he was always fighting for him.”
″ . . . As I covertly studied Sonny’s face, it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate cab windows was the part of ourselves which had been left behind.”
“When I saw him many things I thought I had forgotten came flooding back to me. This was because I had begun, finally, to wonder about Sonny, about the life that Sonny lived inside.”
“This is my Brother, my Blood, the only thing in this World created from that which I was created from, the Person in this World who knows me best, the Person who would miss me most if I was gone.”
“He would think about this a lot later, and the best he could explain it was, his own life no longer mattered. All that did matter were his buddies, his brothers, that they not get hurt, that they not get killed.”
“War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble.”
“Oh, my brother, an insult has been put on me that is deeper than my life. For on the beach my canoe is broken, my house is burned, and in the brush a dead man lies. Every escape is cut off. You must hide us, my brother.”
Raven does come across as the typical bad boy at the beginning, but there is definitely a lot more to his character when you see how he behaves around his brothers and his family in general.
“My biggest problem is my brother, Farley Drexel Hatcher. He’s two-and-a-half years old. Everybody calls him Fudge. I feel sorry for him if he’s going to grow up with a name like Fudge, but I don’t say a word. It’s none of my business.”
“I thought how great it would be if we could trade in Fudge for a nice cocker spaniel. That would solve all my problems. I’d walk him and feed him and play with him. He could even sleep on the edge of my bed at night. But of course that was wishful thinking. My brother is here to stay. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“I can stay up for as long as three minutes. I showed my mother, my father, and Fudge how I can do it right in the living room. They were all impressed. Especially Fudge. He wanted to do it too. So I turned him upside down and tried to teach him. But he always tumbled over backward.”
“But one Sunday, during the Harvest Festival service, a terrible thing happened. Sampson, who had suffered a very bad night with the young mice, dropped off during the sermon and dreamt he was back in the days before he was reformed. When he woke up he found he was not dreaming. He was chasing mice all over the church. It took a bit of time to remember about brotherly love, and by that time it was too late.”
“At breakfast Anthony found a Corvette Sting Ray car kit in his breakfast cereal box and Nick found a Junior Undercover Agent code ring in his breakfast cereal box but in my breakfast cereal box all I found was breakfast cereal.”
“Sampson, the church cat, had listened to so many sermons about the meek being blessed and everybody really being brothers that he had grown quite frighteningly meek and treated Arthur like a brother.”
“I have told him it’s very easy, anyone can fly. All you need is somewhere to go that you can’t get any other way. The next thing you know, you’re flying among the stars.”
“And even though his face was wet with tears he wasn’t supposed to cry when he was alive, I couldn’t see him as anything less than my brother, my favorite, my only.”
″‘It’s me, brother. Your main man, Roberto. And yes, I’m cold. Very cold. It’s no fun bein’ dead.′
‘I’m sorry, Rob. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
‘Understood, my man. But when’re you comin’ to keep me company?‘”
“Bertie, in 1918, has a brother who has lost a leg due to the War.
Benjamin, in 1858 was actually born in San Francisco. His family came here because of the gold rush.”
“I had been friends with Mark long before he came to live with us. He had lived down the street and it seemed to me that we had always been together. We had never had a fight. We had never even had an argument. In looks, we were complete opposites…He was my best friend and we were like brothers.”
“Two of the riders dismounted, handing their reins to the third -a boy of about fourteen- who remained on his horse. They had a look of each other, the riders, like brothers. The first to dismount, his lance still in his hand, was probably the eldest. He was bearded, but no older than about twenty. He went straight up to Malc and began to pull the back-pack from this shoulders.”
″ ‘Humphrey, my good boy,’ said Jacob, ‘recollect, that in the midst of life we are in death, that there is no security for young or old. You or your brother may be cut off in your youth; one may be taken, and the other left. Recollect, your sisters depend on you, and do not therefore be rash.”
“Now it is no use to lament--we must all work, and work cheerfully; and we will pray every morning and every night that God will bless our endeavors and enable us to provide for ourselves, and live here in peace and safety.”
“But it so happened that Nature had given to the youngest sons gifts that she had not bestowed upon his elder brothers. He had a beautiful face and fine, strong, graceful figure; he had a bright smile a sweet, gay voice; he was brave and generous, and had the kindest heart in the world, and seemed to have the power to make everyone love him.”
“Australian girls nearly always begin to think of ‘lovers and nonsense’, as middlefolks call it, long before their English aged sisters do. While still in the short-frocked period of existence, and while their hair is still free-flowing, they take the keenest interest in boys- boy of neighboring schools, other girls’ brothers, young bank clerks and the like.”
″‘Never thought to tell him the gate. Shrimp like Will, to try a place like that!’
‘Couldn’t stop, I reckon. No more strength than a girl. Not like young Mark.‘”
She wants to return to her brother to bury him, is contaminated by radiation, and collapses.
She wakes up in a provisional hospital in Herleshausen, where she witnesses the hardships of others. She learns of the extent of the disaster from television and a nurse.
“Each morning as the sun rose from the east, Ping and his mother and his father and sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles and his forty-two cousins all marched, one by one, down a little bridge to the shore of the Yangtze river.”
“I, too, learned, because I followed him in everything, except that I, always more modest and prudent, jumped off halfway down the staircase, or slid down bit by bit, braking constantly.”
“No one can say that I am not a devoted sister...but the prospect of a visit from Edmund always fills me with alarm. My house is turned upside down, my children behave like wild things, there is nothing but noise and confusion.”
“A very long time ago, when I was a little girl, I didn’t have a naughty little sister at all. I was a child all on my own. I had a father and a mother of course, but I hadn’t any other little brothers or sisters - I was quite alone.”
“All his life Dick Ullathorne had expected to follow his father and brother into the mine. Mining seemed the only natural employment for boys in the pit village where he lived”
“It got so lonely for poor Jancsi, he would have given ten horses for a brother. He had it all figured out- he would give a donkey even for a sister. Not horses, just a donkey.”
But I loved Catherine too; and her brother requires attendance, which, for her sake, I shall supply. Now that she’s dead, I see her in Hindley: Hindley has exactly her eyes, if you had not tried to gouge them out, and made them black and red; and her—
“I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my brothers!”