Michael > Michael's Quotes

“The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.”
― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“As for mending, I think its good to take the time to fix something rather than throw it away. Its an antidote to wastefulness and to the need for immediate gratification. You get to see a whole process through, beginning to end, nothing abstract about it. You'll always notice the fabric scar, of course, but there's an art to mending. If you're careful, the repair can actually add to the beauty of the think because it is a testimony to its worth.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Art of Mending

“I don't want to be a simile anymore,' I said. "I want to be a metaphor.”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more.”
― John Updike

“He did look at his photos and decided he didn’t like any of them: all that black and white, all that same old stuff, characters trying to be characters. He said, Are you trying to be a character?”
― Elmore Leonard, LaBrava

“She was beginning to look older to him.
The view was the same. It didn’t change.”
― Elmore Leonard, LaBrava

“I am writing to go back to the time, at the rest stop in Virginia, when you stared, horror-struck at the taxidermy buck hung over the soda machine by the restrooms, its antlers shadowing your face. In the car, you kept shaking your head. " I don't understand why they would do that. Can't they see it's a corpse? A corpse should go away, not get stuck forever like that."

I think now of that buck, how you stared into its black glass eyes and saw your reflection, your whole body, warped in that lifeless mirror. How it was not the grotesque mounting of a decapitated animal that shook you - but that the taxidermy embodied a death that won't finish, a death that keeps dying as we walk past it to relieve ourselves.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Maybe in the next life we'll meet each other for the first time- believing in everything but the harm we're capable of. Maybe we'll be the opposite of buffaloes. We'll grow wings and spill over the cliff as a generation of monarchs, heading home. Green Apple.

Like snow covering the particulars of the city, they will say we never happened, that our survival was a myth. But they're wrong. You and I, we were real. We laughed knowing joy would tear the stitches from our lips.

Remember: The rules, like streets, can only take you to known places. Underneath the grid is a field- it was always there- where to be lost is never to be wrong, but simply more.

As a rule, be more.

As a rule, I miss you.

As a rule,"little" is always smaller than "small". Don't ask me why.

I'm sorry I don't call enough.

Green Apple.

I'm sorry I keep saying How are you? when I really mean Are you happy?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“To look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“There's a Chinese saying. 'When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago.' "
The Chinese engineer smiles. "Good one."
" 'When is the next best time? Now.' "
"Ah! Okay!" The smile turns real. Until today, he has never planted anything. But Now, that next best of times, is long, and rewrites everything.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“You have given me a thing I could never have imagined, before I knew you. It's like I had the word "book," and you put one in my hands. I had the world "game," and you taught me how to play. I had the word "life," and then you came along and said, "Oh! You mean this.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Love for trees pours out of her—the grace of them, their supple experimentation, the constant variety and surprise. These slow, deliberate creatures with their elaborate vocabularies, each distinctive, shaping each other, breeding birds, sinking carbon, purifying water, filtering poisons from the ground, stabilizing the micro-climate. Join enough living things together, through the air and underground, and you wind up with something that has intentions.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“He covers his closed eyes with one hand and says, "I'm sorry." No forgiveness comes, or ever will. But here's the thing about trees, the greatest thing: even when he can't see them, even when he can't get near, even when he can't remember how they go, he can climb, and they will hold him high above the ground and let him look out over the arc of the Earth.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“The boy thinks: Something slow and purposeful wants to turn every human building into soil.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“I think that soon enough- not right away, but soon- if software keeps getting better and giving us more room, I think that we'll be able to make ourselves into anything we want.
"That...sounds a little out there."
"Yes. Maybe it is."
"Games aren't... People will still want money. They'll still want prestige and social status. Politics. That's forever."
"Yes. Forever? Maybe." Neelay stares into his screen, a world coming on hard, where social status will accrue entirely by votes in a space that is at once instant, global, anonymous, virtual, and merciless.
"People still have bodies. They want real power. Friends and lovers. Rewards. Accomplishments."
"Sure. But soon we'll carry all of that around in our pockets. We'll live and trade and make deals and have love affairs, all in symbol space. The world will be a game, with on-screen scores. And all this?" He waves, as people do on phones, even knowing Chris can't see him. "All the things you say people really want? Real life? Soon we won't even remember how it used to go."p229-30”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Thank you," she says, following the ancient formula. "For all these gifts that you have given." And still not knowing how to stop, she adds, "We're sorry. We didn't know how hard it is for you to grow back.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“But it's the same basic problem: What keeps us from seeing the obvious?"

Douglas puts his hand to the brass bull's horn. "And? What does?"

"Mostly other people.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Olivia leans in. "Are you okay?" His reply sticks in his wide, coprophagic grin.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“I never knew how strong a drug other people are."

"The strongest. Or at least the most widely abused."

"How long does it take to . . . detox?"

He considers. "Nobody's ever clean.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“The Brinkmans take to reading, when they're alone together. And, together, they're alone most of the time. ... In place of children, then, books...Ray's shelves are organized by topic; Dorothy's, alphabetical by author. He prefers state-of-the-art books with fresh copyrights. She needs to communicate with the distant dead, alien souls as different from her as possible...

Once any given volume enters the house, it can never leave. For Ray, the goal is readiness: a book for every unforeseeable need. Dorothy strives to keep loyal independent booksellers afloat and save neglected gems from the cutout bin. Ray thinks: You never know when you might finally get around to reading that tome you picked up five years ago. And Dorothy: Someday you'll need to take down a worn-out volume and flip to that passage on the lower right-hand face, ten pages from the end, that fills you with such sweet and vicious pain.

The conversion of their house into a library happens too slowly to see. The books that won't fit she lays on their sides, on top of the existing rows. This warps the covers and makes him crazy. For a while they solve the problem with more furniture. A pair of cherry cases to set between the windows in his downstairs office. A large walnut unit in the front room, in the space traditionally reserved for the television altar. Maple in the guest room. He says, "That should hold us for a while." She laughs, knowing from every novel she has ever read, how brief a while a while can be.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“It's so simple," she says. "So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don't see it. So the authority of people is bankrupt." Maidenhair fixes him with a look between interest and pity. Adam just wants the cradle to stop rocking. "Is the house on fire?"

A shrug. A sideways pull of the lips. "Yes."

"And you want to observe the handful of people who're screaming, Put it out, when everyone else is happy watching things burn."

A minute ago, this woman was the subject of Adam's observational study. Now he wants to confide in her. "It has a name. We call it the bystander effect. I once let my professor die because no one else in the lecture hall stood up. The larger the group . . ."

"…the harder it is to cry, Fire?”
― Richard Powers

“I'M GLAD I'M NOT PERFECT—I'D BE BORED TO DEATH.”
― Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

“This was too much. "I refuse. I absolutely REFUSE to be an onion.”
― Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

“In this world, it is only men who are guilty of anything, men of flesh and bones and gravity and sins.”
― Fernando A. Flores, Tears of the Trufflepig

“As Rilke says, there are no classes for beginners in life, the most difficult thing is always asked of one right away.”
― James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime

“The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four–the years turn dry as leaves.”
― James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime

“Her shit, Jesse liked to tell himself, had finally come in.”
― Mike Lupica, Robert B. Parker's Fallout

“Some people in life, Sue, are weather forecasters, whereas other people are the weather itself.”
― Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice

“You’re beautiful in your own skin. You brought with you into the world some kind of human amazingness, and you can depend on it, always. Please try not to ever let anybody talk you out of that.”
― Michael Cunningham, Day

“She wanted this. She wanted the marriage. She wanted the kids. She wanted the place in Brooklyn, refused to worry overmuch about the mortgage payments. She wanted the job, too. She was good at it. She strove. She outperformed others. The trick now, it seems, is to keep wanting it, the job as well as the marriage, motherhood, the stratospherically costly handbag. The trick is learning not to despise herself for her claustrophobia and disappointment”
― Michael Cunningham, Day