The Natural Quotes

“The ball flew at him and he was conscious of its bird-form and white flapping wings he heard a noise like the bang of a firecracker at his feet and Sam had the ball in his mitt. Unable to believe his ears he heard Mercy intone a reluctant strike.”

“He coulda been a king.”

“The ball screamed toward the pitcher and seemed suddenly to dive down at his feet. He grabbed it to throw to first and realized to his horror that he held only the cover. The rest of it, unraveling cotton thread as it rode, was headed into the outfield.”

“When Bump died Memo went wild with grief...her womb stirring at the image of his restoration. Yet she saw down a dark corridor that he was laid out dead, gripping in his fingers the glowing ball he had caught.”

“Wonderboy flashed in the sun. It caught the sphere where it was the biggest. A noise like a twenty-one gun salute cracked the sky.”

“Sometimes when I walk down the street I bet people will say there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in the game.”

“And with a magnificent twisting jump, he trapped the ball in his iron fingers. Yet the wall continued to advance, and...Bump bumped it with a skull-breaking bang.”

“We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.”

“Then it flashed on him the reason she was standing was to show her confidence in him”

“As a youngster I was frightened of the dark—used to wake up sobbing in it, as if it were water and I were drowning—but you will observe that I have disciplined myself so thoroughly against that fear, that I much prefer a dark to a lit room”

“He was traveling (on the train that never stopped). His self, his mind, raced on and he felt he hadn’t stopped going wherever he was going because he hadn’t yet arrived.”

“I never did learn anything out of my past life, now I have to suffer again.”

“Roy caught the pitcher’s eye. His own had blood in them. Youngberry shuddered. He threw—a bad ball—but the batter leaped at it. He struck out with a roar.”

“Sailing lower into the pale green sea, he sought everywhere for the reddish glint of her scales, until the water became dense and dark green and then everything gradually got so black he lost all sight of where he was.”

“It later struck him that the picture he had drawn of Memo sitting domestically home wasn’t exactly the girl she was. The kind he had in mind, though it bothered him to admit it, was more like Iris seemed to be, only she didn’t suit him.”

“She gazed at him with touched and troubled eyes. ‘Is that all?...Isn’t there something over and above earthly things—some more glorious meaning to one’s life and activities?‘”

“Sometimes he wished he had no ambitions—often wondered where they had come from in his life, because he remembered how satisfied he had been as a youngster, and that with the little he had—a dog, a stick, an aloneness he loved.”

“A twisted dagger of smoke drifted up from the gun barrel. Fallen on one knee he groped for the bullet, sickened as it moved, and fell over as the forest flew upward, and she, making muted noises of triumph and despair, danced on her toes around the stricken hero.”

“Roy found himself looking around every so often to make sure he was here. He was, all right, yet in all his imagining of how it would be when he finally hit the majors, he had not expected to feel so down in the dumps.”

“There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, an exquisite mystical experience.”

“Sometimes as we grow, we will inevitably shed some folk naturally from our lives. But losing them isn’t going to stunt your growth. Nope, not one single bit. You’re going to keep growing.”