56 quotes found
Writer · American
American writer
“The Indians did not like to see anything odd -- a white squirrel, for instance. . . . They thought such oddities were messages, were omens of evil. . . . And the Indians put a great deal of faith i...”
“Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they ...”
“Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat ...”
“I’m seeing so much of America today,” Luya kept telling Lowell in nervously accented English. It became a personal catchphrase for him — whenever things were not to his liking, he’d say that — I’m ...”
“Language does this to our memories—simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.”
“The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true,only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Lan...”
“Without our listening, all the stories are the same story.”
“Because what could be more Casablanca? Suddenly Harlow saw that what she’d always wanted was a man of principle. A man of action. A domestic terrorist. Every girl’s dream, if she can’t have a vampi...”
“You can’t imagine the white-hot fury someone who can’t sleep has toward the beautiful dreamer beside him.”
“A nonhuman animal had better have a good lawyer. In 1508, Bartholomé Chassenée earned fame and fortune for his eloquent representation of the rats of his French province. These rats had been charge...”
“Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course. Nor June. But January is your third most common month for madness.”
“We don't choose whom we love,” he told Maura, so gently that she knew he knew. If she wasn't going to be loved in return, she would have liked not to be pitied for it. She got neither of these wish...”
“He envied the bark, which had been, in the course of one lifetime, both forest and fire. One endured; one destroyed.”
“The dogs came racing up the stairs. They danced at Rima's feet, frantic with the need to communicate something to her. Little Timmy's down the well! Feed us ice cream and potato chips! Sometimes th...”
“Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come.”
“Like they say, you never know a person till you’ve done time with them.”
