54 quotes found
Novelist · American · 1941
American novelist (born 1941)
“Past is past... no it's not! People are always fond of saying that, but what's past is never past; not entirely.”
“Don't count on me to take you in because I'm angry. I'm angry at you for leading us on such a song and dance all these years, not just these few years but all the years, skipping all those holidays...”
“Ghosts... they are the completions of the deads intended gestures, there unfinished plans still hanging in the air - something like when you forgot one thing and so you pantomime the motion.”
“But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.”
“What if heaven is just a vast consciousness that the dead return to? And their assignment is to report on the experiences they collected during their time on earth?...The spring mornings they woke ...”
“For me, writing was the only way out.”
“The trouble with dying...is that you don't get to see how everything turns out. You won't know the ending.”
“I'm falling into disrepair”
“Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.”
“The very thing that attracts you to someone can end up putting you off.”
“It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.”
“Face it,' I said. 'There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got,' I said.”
“People always call it luck when youve acted more sensibly than they have. ”
“I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will ...”
“Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine - what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age.”
“For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.”
“Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!”
“Why wasn't there an etiquette book for runaway wives?”
“It seems to me that since I've had children I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while but when I did write I had more of a self to speak from.”
“You know why I like to talk to you, Delia? You never interrupt with your experiences. Not jiggling your foot till you get a chance to jump in with your life history.”
