Literary Birthday – 6 August – John Graves

John Graves was born 6 August 1920 and died 31 July 2013.

Quotes

1. You notice. And noticing, you live.
2. If you are lucky and reverent, and hush for a moment the doubts in your head, sometimes God will whisper in your ear.
3. If a man couldn’t escape what he came from, we would most of us still be peasants in Old World hovels. But, if, having escaped or not, he wants in some way to know himself, define himself, and tries to do it without taking into account the thing he came from, he is writing without any ink in his pen. The provincial who cultivates only his roots is in peril, potato-like, of becoming more root than plant. The man who cuts his roots away and denies that they were ever connected with him withers into half a man.
4. It takes time for the habit of people to wear off of you.
5. People make trouble, trouble makes history.

John Graves was an American writer known for his book Goodbye to a River. His other books include Hard Scrabble, From a Limestone Ledge, and Myself and Strangers. Over the years, Graves has also contributed to Texas Monthly and written for the Sierra Club, the Atlantic, Esquire, and the New Yorker.

Source for quotes

Source for image:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Graves.jpeg

University of Houston Digital Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 by Amanda Patterson

Please click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar