Quote of the Day

"In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there."

From Willa Cather's My Ántonia (1918). I read this last week, after reading about it on Phil's blog. It is told through the memory of Jim Burden and his childhood on the Nebraska prairie. There he meets Ántonia, a young Bohemian girl, whose family is ill-equipped for immigration and too poor to manage well their harsh new life. I can't remember the last time I was so moved by a book. It left me deeply sighing and full of longing for something I can't define. The language is beautiful and the the characters are fully-realized and will stay with me a long time, especially the heroine of the title.