Quotes by Ernest Ford

“She had some ignition trouble with the old Model T Ford she then drove and the young man who worked in the garage and had served in the last year of the war had not been adept, or perhaps had not broken the priority of other vehicles, in repairing Miss Stein’s Ford. Anyway he had not been sérieux and had been corrected severely by the patron of the garage after Miss Stein’s protest. The patron had said to him, “You are all a génération perdue.” “That’s what you are. That’s what you all are,” Miss Stein said. “All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.””

“Gee, Mr. Davis, I can’t remember much about that time. I think it was about Italian writers and about Mr. Ford. Mr. Joyce couldn’t stand Mr. Ford. Mr. Pound had gotten on his nerves, too. ‘Ezra’s mad, Hudson,’ he said to papa. I can remember that because I thought mad meant mad like a mad dog and I remember sitting there and watching Mr. Joyce’s face, it was sort of red with awfully smooth skin, cold weather skin, and his glasses that had one lens even thicker than the other, and thinking of Mr. Pound with his red hair and his pointed beard and his nice eyes, with white stuff sort of like lather dripping out of his mouth. I thought it was terrible Mr. Pound was mad and I hoped we wouldn’t run into him. Then Mr. Joyce said, ‘Of course Ford’s been mad for years,’ and I saw Mr. Ford with his big, pale, funny face and his pale eyes and his mouth with the teeth loose in it and always about half open and that awful lather dripping down his jaws too.””

“Ernest had lain awake many nights and wondered. Girls were complicated, women confounding, their challenges almost insurmountable. The world was a rigged game, stacked against them. But maybe Maisie had played to her advantage””

“My okaasan would say, 'Water is Yin. Fire is Yang. And tea is a perfect expression of both.'""Both?" Ernest asked politely."Both sides of life, hot and cold, light and dark, not as opposites, but as complementary parts of each other," Fahn said, pausing, as though deep in thought. "Life is about balancing the good and the bad, the past and the present.””

“My mission doesn't matter anymore. Patriotism drives my work ethic. Love drives my soul. - Ernest Stone””

“You ought to dream,” Bill said. “All our biggest business men have been dreamers. Look at Ford. Look at President Coolidge. Look at Rockefeller. Look at Jo Davidson.””

“The standout, though, was Maisie May, who’d been growing her hair longer. Ernest had never seen her in a corset before, and he wondered what battle had been fought to get her into one of those spoon-billed contraptions. He imagined an angry, feral, six-toed cat, with long claws and no tail, hissing while being dunked into icy water.””

“that's hilaire belloc,' i said to my friend. 'ford was here this afternoon and cut him dead.' 'don't be a silly ass,' my friend said. 'that's aleister crowley, the diabolist. he's supposed to be the wickedest man in the world.' 'sorry,' i said.””

“The truth of the matter was that these days Gracie barely remembered him. Her mind had become a one-way mirror. Ernest could see her clearly, but to Gracie he’d been lost behind her troubled, distorted reflection.””

“Ernest glanced about at all the faces”

“Everyone in Chinatown seems to have a B side to his or her character---an untold story---Ernest reasoned as he lit a cigarette and remembered that one of his favorite songs was a Hank Williams flip-side record, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." That song had seemed to do pretty well. Then again, some say Hank Williams died of a broken heart.””

“To Ernest, the fairs were merely bookends, sentinels carved from stone, rooted in bedrock, immovable. His life, Gracie’s life, was the mystery caught in between.””

“Parents always have a story that their children don’t really know,” Ernest said. “I guess this is mine.””

“The Washington Children’s Home Society did indeed donate a baby boy to be raffled off. And yes, his name in all the newspapers was Ernest. Ironically, he was offered up under the auspices of then-director L. J. Covington, who fought tirelessly against the moral plagues of his time but apparently had no problem giving away a child.””

“You ever hear the saying 'The third time's the charm'? It isn't. It's just a way of saying that you've tried something twice and failed and you're too stubborn or stupid to quit and move on.- Ernest Stone””