A Feather on the Breath of God Quotes

“I had discovered the miraculous possibility that art holds out to us: to be a part of the world and to be removed from the world at the same time.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“The wish to please, to charm—the desire to provoke desire—runs deep in me and seems to have been there from the beginning.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“The sound of a pen scratching in the night is a holy sound.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“My mother sobbed. "I'm not asking for that much." But she was: She was asking him to be someone else.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“There are times when I seem to remember my mother as though she were a landscape rather than a person. Those blue eyes filled the entire sky of my childhood.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“I want to get down something T.S. Eliot said: Human beings are capable of passions that human experience can never live up to.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“He is convinced--and what immigrant isn't?--that all Americans are crazy.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“Do everything you can to get men to look at you, and when they do, pretend they don't exist. Because only a slut looks back. Is that perfectly clear? Early lesson on the female condition.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“To be a woman is always to be hiding something.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“End of the semester. It is very late and I am alone in my room. A narrow desk by the window, overlooking the courtyard that is slowly filling up with snow. Books open on the desk, bright lamp, cigarettes, a boyfriend's photograph. I will sit there all through the night, I will smoke all the cigarettes, and in the morning I will cross the courtyard to answer questions about literature and the tragic sense of life. The sound of a pen scratching in the night is a holy sound. I want to get down something T. S. Eliot said: Human beings are capable of passions that human experience can never live up to.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“She swiftly disabused us of certain notions acquired at school. America is the land of equal opportunity. All men are brothers. The best things in life are free.”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God

“A riddle: If it was true what she said, that she expected nothing from her husband, why was she forever seething with disappointment?”
― Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God