Susan Coleman > Susan's Quotes

“Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep Boo out of sight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the bed most of the time. Atticus said no, it wasn't that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Beneath the pinholed heaven, the night was God-dimensioned and monumental before electric light.”
― Niall Williams, This Is Happiness

“We live this life by a kind of conspiracy of grace: the common assumption, or pretense, that human existence is 'good' or 'matters' or has 'meaning,' a glaze of charm or humor by which we conceal from one another and perhaps even ourselves the suspicion that it does not, and our conviction in times of trouble that it is overpriced - something to be endured rather than enjoyed.”
― Peter De Vries, The Blood of the Lamb

“We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life that you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn't chosen. And sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you were living.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“It isn't a sadness, but a joy, that we don't do the same things for the length of our lives.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“As I've said, I am keenly aware I am dealing in antiquities. When you are born in one century and find yourself walking around in another there's a certain infirmity to your footing. May we all be so lucky to live long enough to see our time turn to fable.”
― Niall Williams, This Is Happiness

“You live long enough you understand prayers can be answered on a different frequency than the one you were listening for.”
― Niall Williams, This Is Happiness

“... it seems to me every life has a few gleaming times, times when things were brighter, more intense and urgent, had more life in them I suppose.”
― Niall Williams, This Is Happiness

“Often in the morning they rode out along the tracks on Easter and took their lunch and once rode as far as the little cemetery halfway to Norka where there was a stand of cottonwood trees with their leaves washing and turning in the wind, and they ate lunch there in the freckled shade of the trees and came back in the late afternoon with the sun sliding down behind them, making a single shadow of them and the horse together, the shadow out in front like a thin dark antic precursor of what they were about to become.”
― Kent Haruf, Plainsong