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“When you're young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brand new penny, but before you get to wonderful you're going to have to pass through all right. And when you get to all right, stop and take a good long look, because that may be as far as you're ever going to go.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful

“There is in this valley a beating heart. It is always and ever there. And when I am gone, it will beat for you and when you are gone, it will beat for your children and theirs, forever. Forever. Until there is no water, no air, no green in the spring or gold in the autumn, no stars in the sky or wind from the north. And when you cannot speak, it will speak for you. When you cannot see, it will be your eyes. When you cannot remember, it will be your memory. It will never forget you. And when you cannot be faithful, it will save a place for your return. This is a gift to you. It cannot be taken away. It is yours forever. It is the narrative of this world, and the scrapbook of your own small life, and, when you are gone into ash and darkness and the grave, it will tell your story.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful

“The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are things that actually, certifiably happened, things you can pinpoint the day, the hour, the minute. When you think about it, though, those things, mostly seem to happen to other people.


This story actually happened, and it happened pretty much the way I am going to tell it to you. It's a true story as much as six decades or telling and remembering can allow it to be true. Time changes things, and you don't always get everything right. You remember a little thing clear as a bell, the weather, say, or the splash of light on the river's ripples as the sun was going down into the black pines. things not even connected to anything in particular, while other things, big things even, come completely disconnected and no longer have any shape or sound. The little things seem more real than the big things.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful

“It's a sad thing to watch your best friend turn into somebody you don't know anymore. Or even want to know.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful

“Children remember staying up late. Grownups think about getting up early”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful

“Now it's your land. But it's important, at least to me,that you remember that it's not just your land. There is a history. Now you're part of it. Good night. And off they go.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful

“He loved her so much he felt his bones would break. Loving her was like lying in a bed of nettles, and the feel of her skin against his was the only balm, the only time the stinging stopped, while, for her, he was the warm bath she took to stave off the cold waterfall of Boaty's indifference.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful

“When you’re young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brand- new penny, but before you get to wonderful you’re going to have to pass through all right. And when you get to all right, stop and take a good, long look, because that may be as far as you’re ever going to go.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out To Wonderful

“He walked home, completely at peace. He knew now he would go on doing the things he was doing -- going to work, buying up land he didn't understand, seeing Sylvan Glass for reasons he couldn't help. But he also knew it would all be fine, whatever happened. He knew it was the right thing to do. He was in the place he was meant to be. He was home, finally, at the happy and complete end of his long and troubled road. He was home.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful

“The thousand thousand grasses, dry now in the late-summer heat, bristle like the brittle pages of a thousand ancient books being turned by invisible scholars. Every blade and leaf and rock speaking of loss and endurance, the birds settling down for another night or two before their long, familiar hegira. The landscape he walks is an endless cascade of loss and dying and coming to life again, and he feels the immense silence of the dead and the eternal pulse of the living in the soles of his feet.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful

“But this here, the valley of sweet Virginia, this is the blissful shore. There is no more to reach for. But, humming, he knows. He knows what he believes. He believes in the strength of muscle, the pleasures of the body, the goodness of the heart. He believes in goodness, and this is a new thing, a gift to him from the river and the land and the blue light now almost black, the ink of the sky pocked with stars. This is what the valley and its waters whisper into his ear, in this evening into night. He believes at this moment, and he will always believe it, that people are good, and that he is good among them.”
― Robert Goolrick, Heading Out to Wonderful