49 quotes found
Novelist · American · 1949
American novelist (born 1949)
“People with good intentions never give up!”
“Evil people must spread their evil everywhere.”
“The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.”
“English majors understand human nature better than economists do.”
“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
“Every spot on earth is particular, detailed, and incomprehensibly complex.”
“Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings hes having right now. Thats how he keeps betraying us, why he roars at us with such conviction. ...”
“My mind is like a room where the door swings free in the breeze, and many visitors come and go and stay and vanish as they will.”
“Some folk learned the nature of God, that He was merciful, having spared a husband or some cattle, that He was strict, having meted out hard punishment for small sins, that He was attentive, having...”
“Had I faced all the facts It seemed like I had but actually you never know just by remembering how many there were to have faced.”
“I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much...”
“Arthur said, You must know that you don't love children for being good or bad. I know you know that.Why do you love them?Because you do, said Arthur. Because they don't know what's coming and maybe...”
“...I had been with my father so constantly for so long that I knew less and less about him with every passing year. Every meaningful image was jumbled together with the countless moments of our dai...”
“So all I have is the knowledge that I saw! That I saw without being afraid and without turning away, and that I didn't forgive the unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can't stand wha...”
“I am thirty-five years old, and it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later. I dont think it is years themselves, or the dis...”
“The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considere...”
“There were no toys under the bed--that wasn't why he liked it. Why he liked it was that there wasn't anything under the bed--no chickens, no Joey, no Eloise, no sheep, no "no"s. He could lie under ...”
“Upstairs, in the cupboard, he had a box of things he had saved as a boy and a young man. He hadn't looked into it in twenty years or more. Nothing fancy or valuable, but things that had meant somet...”
“Almonds. Apricots. Avocadoes. Some peaches I don't know. Grapefruit. Lemones. Probably oranges.”
“In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.”
“A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it t...”
“This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight.”
