Edward > Edward's Quotes

“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Loneliness, I've read, is like being in a long line, waiting to reach the front where it's promised something good will happen. Only the line never moves, and other people are always coming in ahead of you, and the front, the place where you want to be, is always farther and farther away until you no longer believe it has anything to offer you.”
― Richard Ford, Canada

“We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“And there are words, significant words, you do not want to say, words that account for busted-up lives, words that try to fix something ruined that shouldn’t be ruined and no one wanted ruined, and that words can’t fix anyway. Telling”
― Richard Ford, Wildlife

“If buildings had memories, perhaps it would be best if they never changed into something else. There was a lot to be said, it now seemed, for the Racetrack pub and its permanent "Joe's not in" sign in the window. The Racetrack didn't have to have a memory - it lived its history endlessly. This place though... this place was schizophrenic, and I'd seen inside its mind.”
― Edward L. Lanner, An Evening with Nicholas and Martin

“Opposite the off-licence on Dockers Road, a car was parked on double-yellow lines. Hidden within the sunlight bouncing from its roof was the source of a frail tapping that defeated the din of the city. Squinting into that diamond of light, I discerned a blue tit crystallising from the glare. The little bird was pecking at its reflection. I wanted to tell it to stop.”
― Edward L. Lanner, The Leap into Sunlight

“I’d like to shout down through a hole in the ceiling of time and advise the people of a hundred years ago: If you want your secrets kept, whisper them into the ear of your dearest, most trusted friend. Do not trust the keyboard and screen. If you do, we’ll know everything.”
― Ian McEwan, What We Can Know