James Hurst Quotes

“Such a name sounds good only on a tombstone.”

“Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him, because nobody expects much from someone called Doodle.”

“But all of us must have something to be proud of, and Doodle had become mine. I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death.”

“Aw, come on, Doodle. You can do it. Do you want to be different from everybody else when you start school?”

“Finally, I could see I was licked. Doodle was my brother, and he was going to cling to me forever, no matter what I did, so I dragged him across the burning cotton field to share with him the only beauty I knew, Old Woman Swamp.”

“There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction, and at times I was mean to Doodle.”

“For a long time, it seemed forever, I lay there crying, sheltering my scarlet ibis from the heresy of rain.”

“Of course, I was old enough to know this wouldn’t work out, but the picture he painted was so beautiful and serene that all I could do was whisper yes, yes.”

“They did not know that I did it for myself; that pride, whose slave I was, spoke to me louder than all their voices; and that Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother.”

“Of course, I was old enough to know this wouldn’t work out, but the picture he painted was so beautiful and serene that all I could do was whisper yes, yes.”

“Don’t leave me, brother. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”

“He was born when I was six and was, from the outset, a disappointment.”