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To a God Unknown

Steinbeck, John | Bantam, 1960

 

p. 132

(Joseph’s wife, Elizabeth, has just died in a fall at the strange rock in the glade where the two of them felt the mysterious Life-Force moving). “He went to his own dark home and lighted the lamps and set fire in the stove. The clock wound by Elizabeth still ticked, storing in its spring the pressure of her hand, and the wool socks she had hung to dry over the stove screen were still damp. These were vital parts of Elizabeth that were not dead yet. Joseph pondered slowly over it. Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead till the things he changed are dead.”