[Quotes] For Kicks, Dick Francis
The visitor turned to gaze at the big blue-green lagoon to the left, with the snow-capped mountains rising steeply in rocky beauty along the far side of it. Puffs of cloud like plumes crowned the peaks. Grand and glorious scenery it was, to his fresh eyes.
But to me, walls.
As simple as that, Dick Francis introduces and establishes the protagonist's malcontent and feeling of being trapped in his own life.
The full moon blazed in the black sky, and through a gap in the hills behind me Mount Kosciusko distantly stretched its blunt snow-capped summit into the light. I sat on a rock up on the mountain, looking down on my home.
There lay the lagoon, the big pasture paddocks stretching away to the bush, the tidy white-railed small paddocks near the house, the silvery roof of the foaling boxes, the solid bulk of the stable block, the bunkhouse, the long, low graceful shape of the dwelling house with a glitter of moonlight on the big window at the end.
There lay my prison.
I didn’t grudge the unending labor. I was very fond of my sisters and brother. I had no regrets at all that I had done what I had. But the feeling that I had built a prosperous trap for myself had slowly eaten away the earlier contentment I had found in providing for them.
It usually hit me about a week after they had gone back to school, this fierce aching desperation to be free. Free for a good long while: to go farther than the round of horse sales, farther than the occasional quick trip to Sydney or Melbourne or Cooma.
To have something else to remember but the procession of profitable days, something else to see besides the beauty with which I was surrounded. I had been so busy stuffing worms down my fellow nestlings’ throats that I had never stretched my wings.
Telling myself that these thoughts were useless, that they were self-pity, that my unhappiness was unreasonable, did no good at all, I continued at night to sink into head-holding miseries of depression, and kept these moods out of my days-and my balance sheets-only by working to my limit.
Common sense said that the whole idea was crazy, that the Earl of October was an irresponsible nut, that I hadn’t any right to leave my family to fend for themselves while I went gallivanting around the world, and that the only possible course open to me was to stay where I was, and learn to be content.
Common sense lost.
But to me, walls.
As simple as that, Dick Francis introduces and establishes the protagonist's malcontent and feeling of being trapped in his own life.
The full moon blazed in the black sky, and through a gap in the hills behind me Mount Kosciusko distantly stretched its blunt snow-capped summit into the light. I sat on a rock up on the mountain, looking down on my home.
There lay the lagoon, the big pasture paddocks stretching away to the bush, the tidy white-railed small paddocks near the house, the silvery roof of the foaling boxes, the solid bulk of the stable block, the bunkhouse, the long, low graceful shape of the dwelling house with a glitter of moonlight on the big window at the end.
There lay my prison.
I didn’t grudge the unending labor. I was very fond of my sisters and brother. I had no regrets at all that I had done what I had. But the feeling that I had built a prosperous trap for myself had slowly eaten away the earlier contentment I had found in providing for them.
It usually hit me about a week after they had gone back to school, this fierce aching desperation to be free. Free for a good long while: to go farther than the round of horse sales, farther than the occasional quick trip to Sydney or Melbourne or Cooma.
To have something else to remember but the procession of profitable days, something else to see besides the beauty with which I was surrounded. I had been so busy stuffing worms down my fellow nestlings’ throats that I had never stretched my wings.
Telling myself that these thoughts were useless, that they were self-pity, that my unhappiness was unreasonable, did no good at all, I continued at night to sink into head-holding miseries of depression, and kept these moods out of my days-and my balance sheets-only by working to my limit.
Common sense said that the whole idea was crazy, that the Earl of October was an irresponsible nut, that I hadn’t any right to leave my family to fend for themselves while I went gallivanting around the world, and that the only possible course open to me was to stay where I was, and learn to be content.
Common sense lost.