Quotes by Jane Hamilton

“...you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help... And...”

“It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.”

“I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident. I hadn't learned that it can happen so gradually you don't lo...”

“Life, he knew, had meaning and was fully possessed only as it was remembered and reshaped.”

“Wait." Walter went to the basket, taking what was a gray sleeve, drawing it out fro the middle of the heap. "Oh," He said. He held the shapeless wool sweater to his chest. Joyce had knit for months...”

“She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.”

“...the other's self, that enormous hulking thing each possessed, that a self of course is not inconsequential. p124”

“He wondered if somewhere far off, defying the laws of science, Mitch's two screams were still echoing, if those vibrations had traveled into space, if they moved on and on like rays in a light-year...”

“I have given up on speech with the Rev; there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to ...”

“I didn't know how to tell him that I hadn't lost the instinct to survive and yet at the same time I didn't feel much need for self-preservation, that somehow there was a distinction between the two.”

“Sometimes I couldn't figure it out, what all the living was for.”

“He thought there must be a place, like a dead-letter office, where everyone's longing went, yearning that was sent out, day after day. He thought it must collect somewhere, in a dank basement room,...”

“Emma, Emma, Emma," I said, wishing I could somehow teach her to take the smaller blows of life in her stride.”

“She could never be part of so much of his turbulent history, his youthful adventure, where life had been deeply felt.”