Dancing After Hours Quotes

“What cracks had he left in their hearts? Did they love less now and settle for less in return, as they held onto parts of themselves they did not want to give and lose again? Or - and he wished this - did they love more fully because they had survived pain, so no longer feared it?”
― Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hours

“He learned how quickly love died when you weren't looking; if you weren't looking.”
― Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hours

“There’s something about taking the cart back instead of leaving it in the parking lot…It’s significant…Because somebody has to take them in…And if you know that, and you do it for that one guy, you do something else. You join the world…You move out of your isolation and become universal.”
― Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hours

“Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you’ll see in your arms is yourself.”
― Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hours

“Its sound in her soul was a distant fast train. Love did not bring happiness, it did not last, and it ended in pain. She did not want to believe this, and she was not certain that she did; perhaps she feared it was true in her own life, and her fear had become a feeling that tasted like disbelief.”
― Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hours

“There were three of these women, separated by short intervals of pain, remorse, and despair. When he and the last one had their final quarrel - she threw the breadboard - he was nearly fifty-five, and he gave up on love, save the memory of it. Always his aim had been marriage. He had never entered what he considered to be an affair, something whose end was an understood condition of its beginning. But he had loved and wanted for the rest of his life women who took him in their arms, and even their hearts, but did not plan to keep him. He had known that about them, they had told him no lies about what they wanted, and he had persisted, keeping his faith: if he could not change their hearts, then love itself would.”
― Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hours

“One afternoon the bus was late with the children. My imagination was like a storm. I stood at the road, and I couldn't get rid of all the terrible pictures. So I started thanking God for this fear, because it meant I love them so much. The sun was shining on the snow and pines, and I stood down there, thinking of what it would be like not to have that fear; not to love anyone so much you couldn't imagine living on the earth without them...I looked at all the beauty around me and I was grateful. I was still afraid, but the worst of it went out of me.”
― Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hours

“She sat on the patio, drinking a soft drink without sugar, and knew that she longed for spring even as she watched it; she was last April’s leaves fallen in autumn, then frosted, then frozen under snow, and in March wet again and becoming part of the earth, while spring was moving before her eyes, leaving her with the other dead it gave life to a year ago, when not only her skin but her heart felt the touch and light of the sun. (p. 24)”
― Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hours