Cindy > Cindy's Quotes

“But what humans forget, cells remember. The body, that elephant”
― Jeffrey Eugenides

“I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“But, she knew, you didn’t have to marry your soulmate, and you didn’t even have to marry an Interesting. You didn’t always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

“The child who was happy with herself meant the parents had won the jackpot.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

“The minute you had kids you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defensively, and everyone who was outside the walls—even if you'd once been best friends—was now just that, outsiders.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

“She understood that it had never just been about talent: it had also always been about money. Ethan was brilliant at what he did, and he might well have made it even if Ash’s father hadn’t encouraged him, but it really helped that Ethan had grown up in a sophisticated city, and that he had married into a wealthy family. Ash was talented, but not all that talented. This was the thing that no one said, not once. But of course it was fortunate that Ash didn’t have to worry about money while trying to think about art. Her wealthy childhood had given her a head start, and now Ethan had picked up where her childhood had left off.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

“I always thought talent was everything, but maybe it was always money. Or even class. Or if not class exactly, connections.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

“The love between a brother and sister just over a year apart in age held fast. It wasn’t twinship, and it wasn’t romance, but it was more like a passionate loyalty to a dying brand.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

“Ordinary father-daughter love had a charge to it that generally was both permitted and indulged. There was just something so beautiful about the big father complementing the tiny girl. Bigness and tininess together at last – yet the bigness would never hurt the tininess! It respected it. In a world in which big always crushes tiny, you wanted to cry at the beauty of big being kind of and worshipful of and being humbled by tiny. You couldn’t help but think of your own father as you saw your little girl with hers.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

“Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. I have spoken to every person I have encountered these last difficult days...I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive and so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“I cannot count the times I have cursed our lack of urgency. If I ever love again, I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“For their entire lives, even before they met you, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree.”
― Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“You are mine. I recognize you. We twist our souls around each other's miseries. It is that which makes us family.”
― Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren't tears. She wasn't crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Nothing builds community like complaining.”
― Daniel Alarcón, Lost City Radio

“What does the end of a war mean if not that one side ran out of men willing to die?”
― Daniel Alarcón, Lost City Radio

“You don't sound like a scientist; you sound like a poet."
Rey smiled.
"Can I be both?"
"But you'd rather be a poet."
"Who wouldn't?" he said.”
― Daniel Alarcón, Lost City Radio

“The phone collapsed distances, just as the radio did, and, like the radio, it relied on the miracle of imagination: one had to concentrate deeply, plunge headlong into it.”
― Daniel Alarcón, Lost City Radio

“The bond between parent and child is chemical, fierce, and inexplicable, even if that parent is a sworn killer. This connection cannot be measured; it at once more subtle and more powerful than science.”
― Daniel Alarcón, Lost City Radio

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Father McNamee would have said Brother Andre had faith -- he just believed more than other people. And I wondered if faith were not a form of pretending.”
― Matthew Quick, The Good Luck of Right Now

“When something bad happens to us, something good happens - often to someone else. And that's The Good Luck of Right Now. We must believe it. We must. We must. We must.”
― Matthew Quick, The Good Luck of Right Now

“Mom could make small things seem miraculous. That was her talent.”
― Matthew Quick, The Good Luck of Right Now

“Why didn't my father get to give Mom the fairy tale? Why do most people fail to give each other the fairy tale?”
― Matthew Quick, The Good Luck of Right Now

“Nobody knows anything when they are in their midtwenties.”
― Matthew Quick, The Good Luck of Right Now