Andrea Barrett > Quotes

“We write in response to what we read and learn; and in the end we write out of our deepest selves.”
― Andrea Barrett

“..one true thing among all these paths is the need to tap a deep vein of connection between our own uncontrollable interior preoccupations and what we're most concerned about in the world around us. We write in response to that world; we write in response to what we read and learn; and in the end we write out of our deepest selves, the live, breathing, bleeding place where the picture form, and where it all begins.”
― Andrea Barrett

“I have no appetite,' she sighed. 'Not for food, not for work. Not for anything.' I looked at her and wondered what I am except appetite.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“Slowly, I began to relearn something I’d once grasped but had lost sight of: that emotion—that central element of fiction—derives not from information or from explanation, nor from a logical arrangement of the facts, but specifically from powerful images and from the qualities of language: diction, rhythm, form, structure, association, metaphor. And sometimes I also had glimmers of another thing I’d once known: how effectively information can be used to wall off emotion.”
― Andrea Barrett

“It was through Peter that she first understood that the world existed before her, without her. For a few days she could not forgive him for this.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“The life she'd led, each of the places she'd called home sending unexpected shoots toward the next, had made her open to almost anything.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“He will break it to her gently, he thinks. A hint, at first; a few more suggestions in letters over the coming months; in September he'll raise the subject. By then...Perhaps he'll have more encouragement from Dr. Hooker by then, which he can offer to Clara as evidence that his work is worthwhile. Perhaps he'll understand by then how he might justify his plans to her. For now - what else can he say in this letter? He has kept too much from her, these last months. If his letters were meant to be a map of his mind, a way for her to follow his trail, then he has failed her. Somehow, as summer comes to these peaks and he does his job for the last time, he must find a way to let her share in his journey. But for now all he can do is triangulate the first few points.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“In that light, across the field, is all I will never have. Next to me is all I will.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“We all feel unhoused in some sense. That’s part of why we write.”
― Andrea Barrett

“He thought back but Bianca, her foot heavy on the accelerator, thought away. From Rose, their mother, their entire past, books and papers and stories and sorrows: let it sink into the ocean. She had her wallet and her sleeping bag and her running shoes and her van; and she drove as if this were the point from which the rest of her life might begin.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“Like all children, they knew more than they knew that they knew.”
― Andrea Barrett, Ship Fever: Stories

“How long will a person keep talking about himself before noticing that no one is listening?”
― Andrea Barrett, The Air We Breathe

“Not long after he and Margaret were married, he'd complimented her on a pot of yellow blossoms near the front door. She'd laughed, and blushed, and then confessed that weeks earlier, watching him walk around the vegetable garden, she'd slipped out, dug up a brick-sized clump of earth which held the clear impression of his right foot, and tucked it into the flower pot. In that earth she'd planted a chrysanthemum, hoping that as it bloomed year after year so would his love for her. How should he marry again, after that?”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories