Quote collection
451 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Hallie and I... were all there was. The image in the mirror that proves you are still here. We had exactly one sister apiece. We grew up knowing the simple arithmetic of scarcity: A sister is more precious than an eye."
"If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business."
"You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next."
"Independence is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you're a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democrac and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain."
"He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he gets to keep them. A million things you can't have will fit in a human hand."
"When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine. Pigs in Heaven"
"Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out."
"I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the future and my attachment to it. I can't imagine what kind of writer I'd be if I didn't have my kids."
"I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control."
"Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child."
"If I had to give up my life for anything, it would have to have the resilience of hope, the elation of new literacy, the brilliant life of a field of flowers, the elementary kindness of bread. Nothing short of that. It would have to be something as sure as love."
"Ah, the mysterious croak. Here today, gone tomorrow. It's the best reason I can think of to throw open the blinds and risk belief. Right now, this minute, time to move out into the grief and glory. High tide."
"A woman without a man -- a condition of 'manlessness' -- is defined as alone. But a single mother is less alone than the average housewife."
"It's tough to break yourself as news to a town that already knows you."
"I don't look like who I am."
"I don't *ever* write about real people. Art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window."
"What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity."
"Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure."
"It is completely usual for me to get up in the morning, take a look around, and laugh out loud."
"The things I carry closest to my heart are things I can't own."