Michelle Ardillo > Michelle's Quotes

“It was a noteworthy lesson, even for someone who'd been fed a daily diet of italicized lessons: that people in high places, luminaries with advanced degrees in Classics and in possession of excellent manners, can disappoint you as profoundly as anyone else.”
― Elinor Lipman, My Latest Grievance: A Screwball Literary Comedy About Mothers and Family―Witty, Funny Coming-of-Age Story

“There is an old Jewish story, an ordinary Jewish joke. A father was teaching his little son to be less afraid and have more courage. “Jump,” he said, “and I will catch you.” And the little boy trusted him and the little boy jumped. And when his father caught him he felt filled with love. And when he didn’t, he was filled with something else…something more. Life. (From the movie 'Then She Found Me.')”
― Elinor Lipman, Then She Found Me

“As for my approach to historical fiction, I think what I’m drawing from is Saidiya Hartman’s technique of critical fabulation, which is a way of writing against the grain, of injecting empathy and realism to the archival record of a history that feels abstract to us.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory”
― Marcel Proust