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Quotes by Writer
"If, as a culture, we don't bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don't - if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live - well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease.We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help."
32
"Because paper has more patience than people."
32
"It had been so silent in the wake of that commotion, a kind of potent silence that seemed to contain everything. The songs of the birds and the creak of the trees. The dying snow and the unseen gurgling water. The glimmering sun. The certain sky. The gun that didn't have a bullet in its chamber. And the mother. Always the mother. The one who would never come to me."
32
"I was on the cover of a lot of newspapers. I was on the cover of USA Today for every single day for a month. I was on the masthead, so I tend to get recognized a lot, and in weird places. It's always flattering, and it's always odd. It's always at the worst possible time."
32
"You're always making up stuff from the past, she said. "And the stuff you imagine is always better than the stuff that actually happened."
32
"Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others."
32
"Though we hear various reports of his existence we can never find the young wizard who is able so they say to graft the soul of a girl to the soul of her lover so that not even the sharp scissors of the Fates can ever sever them apart."
32
"And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison."
32
"People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die."
32
"With you alongside, Magic is, less a dictionary word, And more a, part of life."
32
"My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search."
32
"The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests."
32
"One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention."
32
"Because she stepped into my world, I began to savor everything, be it a glass of water or a walk in the park. I was positively in-love with her, because she was the greatest positive force in my life. People tried to tell me that I was not in-love with her, and that I only thought that I was. However, reality is almost always wrong, and no one sees the world the way that I do. No one sees her the way that I do. She is the one that puts flavor into my water, and makes an average walk in the park absolutely divine. In my world, in my reality, she is the one that I choose to be in-love with."
32
"I also had a tremendous passion for art and read a lot."
32
"Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions."
32
"The third and, given due consideration, most probable of all my theorems, is that life is ordered by the principles of some religion so peculiar and obscure it has no followers, and none may fathom it, nor know the rituals by which to court its favor."
32
"You look at the world around you, and you take it apart into all its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
32
"What most of all hinders heavenly consolation is that you are too slow in turning yourself to prayer."
32
"Never believe a rumor of my death,' said Peter. 'I have as many lives as a cat. Also as many teeth, as many claws, and the same cheery, cooperative disposition."
32
"Hours of being asked:'Do you understand?' But for all of her answers, she never got around the one question I had wanted to ask.'What does it feel like?"
32
"But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got."
32
"I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy."
32
"Look at her good, Lily,' she said, ''cause you're seeing the end of something.''I am?''Yes, you are, because as long as people have been on this earth, the moon has been a mystery to us. Think about it. She is strong enough to pull the oceans, and when she dies away, she always comes back again. My mama used to tell me Our Lady lived on the moon and that I should dance when her face was bright and hibernate when it was dark.' August stared at the sky a long moment and then, turning toward the house, said, 'Now it won't ever be the same, not after they've landed up there and walked around on her. She'll be just one more science project."
32
"Patience pays off, success and miracle, often in a very big way."
32
"Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories - cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful."
32
"From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us - mostly from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him fro ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever."
32
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