Meg > Meg's Quotes

“She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”
― Junot Diaz

“Nothing more exhilarating ... than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Shot at twenty-seven times - what a Dominican number...”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”
― Junot Diaz

“What else she doesn't know: that the man next to her would end up being her husband and the father of her two children, that after two years together he would leave her, her third and final heartbreak, and she would never love again.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture. That's what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma- she stooped to pick up her purse and your heart flew out of you.”
― Junot Díaz

“Baby, you say, baby this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.”
― Junot Díaz

“Somehow: Molly.
He heard her in the entryway. Mol, Molly, oh boy. When they were first married they used to fight. Say the most insane things. Afterward, sometimes there would be tears. Tears in bed? And then they would - Molly pressing her hot wet face against his hot wet face. They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone's affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he'd ever -
She came in flustered and apologetic, a touch of anger in her face. He'd embarrassed her. He saw that. He'd embarrassed her by doing something that showed she hadn't sufficiently noticed him needing her. She'd been too busy nursing him to notice how scared he was. She was angry at him for pulling this stunt and ashamed of herself for feeling angry at him in his hour of need, and was trying to put the shame and anger behind her now so she could do what might be needed.
All of this was in her face. He knew her so well.
Also concern.
Overriding everything else in that lovely face was concern.
She came to him now, stumbling a bit on a swell in the floor of this stranger's house.”
― George Saunders, Tenth of December

“There is such a shelter in each other.”
― Nick Laird

“We must not be anything other than what we are.”
― Maaza Mengiste, Beneath the Lion's Gaze

“The nature of love is to kill for it, or to die.”
― Maaza Mengiste, Beneath the Lion's Gaze

“When people are finding meaning in things - beware.”
― Edward Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

“I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.”
― Edward Gorey

“I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.”
― Edward Gorey

“I tend to be rather inconsequential and trail off.”
― Edward Gorey

“I just got a rather nasty shock. In looking for something or other I came across the fact that one of my cats is about to be nine years old, and that another of them will shortly thereafter be eight; I have been labouring under the delusion they were about five and six. And yesterday I happened to notice in the mirror that while I have long since grown used to my beard being very grey indeed, I was not prepared to discover that my eyebrows are becoming noticeably shaggy. I feel the tomb is just around the corner. And there are all these books I haven't read yet, even if I am simultaneously reading at least twenty...”
― Edward Gorey, Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer

“A is for Amy who fell down the stairs.
B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
C is for Clara who wasted away.
D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh.
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach.
F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech.

G is for George smothered under a rug.
H is for Hector done in by a thug.
I is for Ida who drowned in a lake.
J is for James who took lye by mistake.
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe.
L is for Leo who choked on some tacks.

M is for Maud who was swept out to sea.
N is for Neville who died of ennui.
O is for Olive run through with an awl.
P is for Prue trampled flat in a brawl.
Q is for Quentin who sank on a mire.
R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire.

S is for Susan who perished of fits.
T is for Titus who flew into bits.
U is for Una who slipped down a drain.
V is for Victor squashed under a train.
W is for Winnie embedded in ice.
X is for Xerxes devoured by mice.

Y is for Yorick whose head was bashed in.
Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.”
― Edward Gorey

“Some tiny creature, mad with wrath, is coming nearer on the path.”
― Edward Gorey, The Evil Garden

“I should like a parsley sandwich.
To the best of my knowledge they are not in season.”
― Edward Gorey

“This is the theory… that anything that is art… is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it’s no good having one without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it’s irritating.”
― Edward Gorey

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
― Oscar Wilde

“ I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn.
Baby, drink milk.
Baby, play ball.
And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”
― Joan Didion, On Self-Respect

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”
― Joan Didion