Burn Quotes

“But always after that, for the rest of his life, he suspected that he did not know how to properly read the emotional landscape of those around him, and that what seemed solid and eternal probably wasn’t, and that love could run very, very deep and also end.”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“No hurry when the compass is spinning. When you are rooted to earth. When living means taking a step but you have no idea toward what. You are alone under the wheeling season, and the best memories are drained by loss.”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“What we take for granted—that another day would come. Everyone had to know in their bones that every life hung by a thread. That the world did. But if we couldn’t pretend to count on a morning of sailing, or fishing, or a visit with someone we loved the next day, we’d go nuts, right? Right. So pretend away.”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“Sometimes at night, looking out the window at the flowing shadow of the treeline under stars blown like grass seed, and listening to the barks of geese drifting down from the high dark, he felt that he might die. Not perish, but simply cease at the apex of his own fullness. There would be a rightness in it. Joy could not be sustained for more than a minute, but what if one was lifted on a wave of happiness and - right on the breaking crest - one’s spirit flew off like a windtorn albatross?”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“that what seemed solid and eternal probably wasn't, and that love could run very, very deep and also end.”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“and it broke his heart-- in the quiet, gentle way a heart can be broken by the same person again and again.”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“Because time worked best when there was a movement toward or away. Toward desire, away from death. Away from the Big Bang, toward an infinite expansion that might or might not be God. Toward quitting time, beer-thirty, a quinceañera, a vacation, a wedding, a funeral. Toward the sense of a poem, or love, or away from the chaos of a dream.”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“And then he thought how there were never any do-overs. What felt like do-overs never were, because scar tissue is not elastic and it has many fewer nerve endings to feel with, or it may be numb and not feel at all. One can tell oneself that some post-catastrophe peace or measure of contentment has more value than euphoria; that arriving at some balance, some equanimity after storm, is deeper than flitting flushes of joy, because the peace is so well earned; but none of that is true. To honor love is the only way to keep it alive. To honor anything.
—Jess”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“These woods, in their exuberant transition to a dark and frozen winter, were real. The coffee he would soon pour into cups that would warm their hands, the welcome heat off the fire, the quiet wheezes and pops as the flames burned down were all real. One could focus, couldn’t one? Mightn’t one sit in the full bore of a sun just clearing the trees and drink coffee quietly as the meadow dried and the day warmed? And feel a measure of peace?”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“The transmigration was so visceral it was as if for a moment he inhabited two lives at once, the one in which he was a teenager stepping out into a glorious Maine autumn morning-- and every love and every possibility was waiting to be tested-- and the one now, in which heartbreak ruled and survival was the best hope. Two musics thrummed in the same heart and wove together without discord. As if every life was an instrument meant to play them both.”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“The transmigration was so visceral it was as if for a momenthe inhabited two lives at once, the one in which he was a teenager stepping out into a glorious Maine autumn morning-- and every love and every possibility was waiting to be tested-- and the one now, in which heartbreak ruled and survival was the best hope. Two musics thrummed in the same heart and wove together without discord. As if every life was an instrument meant to play them both.”
― Peter Heller, Burn

“He had used the word 'purloin' with Storey, who had grunted amusement. "Anachronistic and elegant," he'd said. "I think when everybody is dead you're stuck with 'scavenge'".”
― Peter Heller, Burn