Terry > Terry's Quotes

“My soul has learned what it came to learn, and all the other things are just things. We can't have everything we want. Sometimes, we simply have to believe.”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.”
― Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

“I write slowly. A letter might take me an hour or more. I do not rush. I think through each sentence. My hand does not get tired. You mustn’t rush. When you rush you pen things you didn’t mean and you tire. It takes patience to say exactly what one means, to think of the right word. Sometimes I write a draft and mark it up, then write a clean copy to send. I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal. Sometimes, Caroline, the easiest inroad is to begin with a thank you, for a gift or a kindness or a letter, you know, and then take it from there. Answer every question they’ve asked, and ask your own, and you will have created a never-ending circuit of curiosity and learning. You’re most welcome to write me back if you’d like, but my suggestion would be to think of someone who is far away, someone you don’t see frequently or speak to often on the phone but dearly wish you could, and write to them instead. I wish you the very best.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“But I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction. By and large a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch, and sometimes (this is what I’m getting to) sometimes you see in the distance some lights and it heartens you, the lone house or maybe a village and you come into the warmth of that stopover and go inside. Maybe you have a warm supper and stay a night or maybe you stay there a few years. I had one of those stopovers when the children were young, just before Gilbert died, and Daan and I were happy, even though I didn’t know it was happiness at the time because it felt like busyness”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“I guess there’s no bottom to a person”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“I'm not sure I've ever felt at home in the world, but I'm not sure that's unique”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“Of course you are bored. The mind was not created for idleness. Golf”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“Golf, drinking, staying in one’s pajamas until late in the morning, stretching oneself to find ways in which to pass the days is the way we were meant to spend our vacation weeks, not decades of our lives.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“When I look back at my life as a mother I have a pervasive sense of failure, and yet look at you. Your life is full and good, and so is your brother’s. Fiona, I am sorry I’ve kept you at an arm’s length, teaching you not to need me. I am sorry I was bitter that you visited Rosalie and punished you for it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I am going blind. I’m sorry I didn’t do better. I know you think of me as your mother only, but please remember, inside I am also just a girl.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“I will go into the year as you said: boldly, unapologetically, head up and not taking bullshit from anyone with a penis.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“That amazement one feels at this stage of life—a sort of astonishment that is also confusion, which leads to a sort of worry, or a sort of fear,”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“I despise the notion of Texas with every atom in my being, a hot, barren wasteland of tumbleweed and people carrying guns and wearing cowboy boots,”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“The stretches on the high, windblown road are far commoner than the stopovers in comfort, and aren’t we always trying to get back to the happier times?”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“didn’t have many friends. I read a great deal. I was reading all the time. I remember that. And I wrote a great many letters as a child. Writing letters was easier for me than speaking; it still is.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“I am an old woman and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace,” and then it goes on, and then, “Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time.” This feels like the truest thing I have ever read. I guess there’s no bottom to a person, but I feel you have left fewer stones unturned than anyone else who’s ever passed through, and it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid, so thank you for that, Theodore.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“Second postscript: I am watching this Donald Trump for the presidency in disbelief. The thing has legs”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent

“The Emperor of All Maladies.”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent