A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

who can describe the look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death?

“Look—it’s a novel,” she said. “They’re my characters—they do what I want them to do.”

any novelist worthy of the name ought to be able to invent a more interesting character than any real person.

Ruth thought of a novel as a great, untidy house, a disorderly mansion; her job was to make the place fit to live in, to give it at least the semblance of order.

“There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer,” Greene had written in A Sort of Life.

“. . . to rest on each other in all sorrow . . .” George Eliot had written about marriage. “ ‘. . .to minister to each other in all pain,’ ” Ruth recited, “ ‘to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting . . .’

if a book was any good, it was a slap in the face to someone.

gonna be okay, baby,” Hannah, who was seated next to Ruth, whispered throughout the service. This irreligious litany was a surprisingly welcome irritation

he believed that people who weren’t angry at all were basically unobservant.

Rain is the best policeman,

“Grief is contagious,” Marion began again. “I didn’t want you to catch my grief, Eddie. I really didn’t want Ruth to catch it.”

“Eating with a novel is not eating alone,

The grief over lost children never dies; it is a grief that relents only a little. And then only after a long while.

There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments.

If people take a piece out of you, what’s wrong with taking a piece and a half or two pieces out of them? I don’t pick fights. I do fight back.