When I was six, we moved to the small town of Stratford, about fifteen miles northeast of Wynnewood. My father had worked as a banker, a grain farmer, a fix-it man, and a mechanic. Now he was ready for a new line of work. When I was young, his restless streak seemed perfectly normal. A few years later, I realized that he was an optimistic dreamer, convinced that the next job or business would make us rich. And the fact is that my dad was good at everything he took on. Maybe too good. There wasn't a refrigerator, an outboard motor, a gas or diesel engine that he couldn't repair. If somebody drove over a backfiring John Deere Model 60 tractor to have Ray Franks "take a little look at the damn timing chain," my father would rebuild the engine. And if they'd shaken hands on a price of ten dollars for the job, he would not accept a nickel more, even if he'd spent fifteen dollars on spare parts.
Tommy Franks
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"Sure it's hope,” said Mr. Brisbeau. "Me, I ain't no genius, but I can tell you ‘bout hope. When my boy he's missin' in action, I live wit hope for ten damn years. It's the cruelest thing in the world. If it get a hook in you, maybe it never let you go no matter how hopeless things really is.” He closed up the sack and laughed. "I remember what my grand-mère used to say 'round breakfas' time. My brother John he's always after her to fix pancakes. Firs' ting ever' mornin' he say, ‘Well, I hope we're goin' to have pancakes.' And my grand-mère she tell him jus' be glad his belly's full, him, and then she say, ‘You keep your hope for tomorrow, boy, 'cause we got grits for today.'” He stood and shouldered the sack. "Maybe that's all there is to some kinds of hopin'. It makes them grits go down easier.
Lucius Shepard
As a Line, I say, is looked upon to be the Trace of a Point moving forward, being in some sort divisible by a Point, and may be divided by Motion one Way, viz. as to Length; so Time may be conceiv'd as the Trace of a Moment continually flowing, having some Kind of Divisibility from an Instant, and from a successive Flux, inasmuch as it can be divided some how or other. And like as the Quantity of a Line consists of but one Length following the Motion; so the Quantity of Time pursues but one Succession stretched out as it were in Length, which the Length of the Space moved over shews and determines. We therefore shall always express Time by a right Line; first, indeed, taken or laid down at Pleasure, but whose Parts will exactly answer to the proportionable Parts of Time, as its Points do to the respective Instants of Time, and will aptly serve to represent them. Thus much for Time.
Isaac Barrow
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John Cage