The Lincoln Highway Quotes

––It was the ugly side of chance. But as a civilized society, we ask that even those who have had an unintended hand in the misfortune of others pay some retribution. Of course, the payment of the retribution is in part to satisfy those who’ve suffered the brunt of the misfortune […]. But we also require that it be paid for the benefit of the young man who was the agent of misfortune. So that by having the opportunity to pay his debt, he too can find some solace, some sense of atonement, and thus begin the process of renewal.

But Emmett hadn’t given [Sally] much cause for expectations since he went to Salina. […] He hadn’t asked her to do a thing.

Was he grateful to discover she had chosen to do these things on his and Billy’s behalf? Of course he was. But being grateful was one thing, and being beholden, that was another thing altogether.

Emmett considered offering Jake an apology, but Jake wasn’t there for an apology. Emmett had already apologized to Jake and the rest of the Snyders. He’d apologized in the hours after the fight, then at the station house, and finally on the courthouse steps. His apologies hadn’t done the Snyders any good then, and they weren’t going to do them any good now. […]

––If we’ve got unfinished business, Jake, let’s finish it.

Jake looked like he was struggling with how to begin, like the anger he’d expected to feel––that he was supposed to feel––after all these months was suddenly alluding him.

In the course of our lives, [Sister Agnes] had said, we may do wrong unto others and others may do wrong unto us, resulting in the aforementioned chains. But another way to express the same idea was that through our misdeeds we put ourselves in another person’s debt, just as through their misdeeds they put themselves in ours. And since it’s these debts––those we’ve incurred and those we’re owed––that keep us stirring and stewing in the early hours, the only way to get a good night’s sleep is to balance the accounts.

[…] it suddenly occurred to Woolly that maybe, just maybe, St. George’s and St. Mark’s and St. Paul’s organized every day to be an every-day day not because it made things easier to manage, but because it was the best possible means to prepare the fine young men in their care to catch the 6:42 so that they would always be on time for their meetings at 8:00.

Billy touched the empty page with a hint of reverence.

––This is where Professor Abernathe invites you to set down the story of your own adventure.

––I guess you haven’t had your adventure yet, said Emmett with a smile.

––I think we’re on it now, said Billy.

A fresh start requires the cleaning of the slate. And that means paying off all that you owe, and collecting all that you’re due.

By letting go of the farm and taking his beating in the public square, Emmett had already balanced his accounts. If we were going to head out west together, then maybe it was time for me to balance mine.

But what weighed on his father the most […] was the realization that when Emmett’s mother had gripped her husband’s hand as the fireworks began, it hadn’t been in gratitude for his persistence, for his fealty and support, it had been in gratitude that by gently coaxing her from her malaise in order to witness this magical display, he had reminded her of what joy could be, if only she were willing to leave her daily life behind.

––This must be who you were named for, Ulysses.

And though Ulysses had heard his name spoken ten thousand times before, to hear it spoken by this boy in this moment […] was as if he were hearing it for the very first time. […]

And Ulysses found himself sitting beside the boy and listening to him read, as if the boy were the seasoned traveler hardened by war, and he, Ulysses, were the child.

[Ulysses] understood that the consequences of what he had done should be irrevocable. That is what had led him […] into the life of a vagabond––a life destined to be lived without companionship or purpose.

But maybe the boy was right…

Maybe by placing his own sense of shame above the sanctity of their union, by so readily condemning himself to a life of solitude, he had betrayed his wife a second time.

I felt a surge of tender feelings for the old man in a manner that made my hands sweat. But if the Bible tells us that the sons shall not have to bear the iniquity of the fathers, then it stands to reason that the fathers should not get to bear the innocence of the sons.

So I hit him.

By tossing them together, it seemed to Emmett, Abernathe was encouraging a boy to believe that great scientific discoverers were not exactly real and the heroes of legend were not exactly imagined. That shoulder to shoulder they traveled through the realms of the known and unknown making the most of their intelligence and courage, yes, but also of sorcery and enchantment and the occasional intervention of the gods.

He felt the heat of indignation […] that this man whom he had only just met should take the liberty of scolding him as a parent scolds a child. But at the same time, Emmett understood that his taking umbrage at being treated like a child was childish in itself. Just as he knew that it was childish to feel […] jealous over [Billy and Ulysses’] sudden confederacy.

––[…] after fifty-five years in Nebraska, I think I can tell a stayer from a goer.

––Is that so, I said. Then tell me, Mr. Ransom: Which am I?

You should have seen his face when I said that. […]

––I have indulged you in your manner and your habits; indulged you in your temper and your tongue. But Sally, so help me God, I have come to see that I may have done you a terrible disservice. For by giving you full rein, I have allowed you to become a willful young woman, one who is accustomed to nursing her furies and speaking her mind, and who is, in all likelihood, unsuited to matrimony.

––No, I don't put much stake in apologies. […] Like a settling of accounts. […] If it were only a matter of the movie, it could have been a switch for a switch. Eight minus eight and we’d be done. The problem is that you still owe me for the Oreo incident. […] it should count for something. Rather than an eight minus eight sort of situation, what we have here is more of an eight minus five. So I figure if you take three swings at me, that should make us even.

He was back at Salina. Back in that moment that he’d sworn he’d never think about again: taking Ackerly’s beating as the rest of us watched. It was the fire of justice that was burning through Townhouse now. The fire of justice that appeases the injured spirit and sets the record straight.

––[…] the point of utter abandonment––that moment at which you realize no one will be coming to your aid, not even your Maker––is the very moment in which you may discover the strength required to carry on. The Good Lord does not call you to your feet with hymns from the cherubim and Gabriel blowing his horn. He calls you to your feet by making you feel alone and forgotten. For only when you have seen that you are truly forsaken will you embrace the fact that what happens next rests in your hands, and your hands alone.

­­––[W]ere it in our power to gather up all the personal stories that have been experienced […] around the world and across time, I haven’t the slightest doubt that doppelgangers would abound. […] It is one of the most basic principles of infinity that it must, by definition, encompass not only one of everything, but everything’s duplicate, as well as its triplicate. In fact, to imagine that there are additional versions of ourselves scattered across human history is substantially less outlandish than to imagine that there are none.

[O]f all the boys whom Emmett had known at Salina, he would have ranked Duchess as one of the most likely to bend the rules or the truth in the service of his own convenience. But in the end, Duchess was the one who had been innocent. He was the one who had been sent to Salina having done nothing at all. And he, Emmett Watson, had ended another man’s life.

What right did he have to demand of Duchess that he atone for his sins? What right did he have to demand it of anyone?

So, if the will to move is as old as mankind […], what happens to a man like my father? What switch is flicked […] that takes the God-given will for motion and transforms it into the will for staying put?

[…] If you asked them what brought about the change, they will cloak it in the language of virtue. They will tell you that the American Dream is to settle down, raise a family, make an honest living. […] But maybe the will to stay put stems not from a man’s virtues but from his vices. […] I do believe that the Good Lord has a mission for each and every one of us […]. But maybe […] what He hopes for us is that––like His only begotten son––we will go out into the world and find it for ourselves.

And it was a comfort to be doing this work, to be doing this work in Sally’s company without either of them feeling the need to speak.

Emmett could tell that Sally was ashamed as he was, and there was comfort in that too. […] the comfort of knowing one’s sense of right and wrong was shared by another, and thus was somehow more true.

––I’ll start in front of the cabinet at FAO Schwarz, he said to himself with a smile. And my sister will come […]. And after Duchess meets me at the statue of Abraham Lincoln, he and I will attend the circus, where Billy and Emmett will suddenly reappear. Then we’ll go over the Brooklyn Bridge and up the Empire State Building, where we’ll meet Professor Abernathe. Then it’s off to the grassy train tracks where, sitting by the fire, we’ll hear the story of the two Ulysses and the ancient seer who explained how they could find their ways home again––how they could find their ways home, after ten long years.

But one mustn’t rush, thought Woolly […]. For a one-of-kind kind of day deserves to be relived at the slowest possible pace, with every moment, every twist, every turn of events remembered to the tiniest detail.

Though Abacus had no infirmities to speak of yet, his world too was shrinking. […] And then […] a little boy from Nebraska appears at his doorstep with a gentle demeanor and a fantastical tale. A tale not from a leather-bound tome, mind you. Not from an epic poem written in an unspoken language. […] But from life itself.

How easily we forget––we in the business of storytelling––that life was the point all along.

––You should have been there when your brother talked about the house he wants to build in California. I’ve never seen Woolly so excited. He could just picture the two of you living there together. If we go to the cops now, I’m telling you, within the hour this place is going to be crawling with people, and we’ll never get to finish what Woolly started.

Sitting together on a nearby bench were Woolly and Billy, smiling at the floor plan of the house in California. And there was Sally leaning over a pram to tuck in the blanket of the child in her care. And there by the flower cart was Sister Sarah looking wistful and forlorn. And right there, not more than fifty feet away, standing by the door of his bright yellow car, was Emmett, looking honorable and upright.

[…] I could hear the distant chiming of a clock. Only it wasn’t a clock, and it wasn’t distant. It was the gold watch that had been tucked in the pocket of my vest […].