Dirty Love Quotes

“...it seemed almost inconceivable that in his short marriage to Althea she had, in her quiet way, left him feeling not only worthy, but exceptional, a man not only capable of being a real poet, but a husband and father too.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“Then she turned on him in a hundred small ways, each of them minor and not unusual when one human being lived with another, but this was like saying that a typhoon was nothing more than single drops of rain pushed by a little wind.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“He tried to remember her ever being this way before. In her voice--almost overexuberant--was not simply holiday cheer but joyous relief, like some terminally ill patient who's just been told she's not sick anymore.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“Coming?" Dennis held his arm out for her, a patient smile in his voice. She peered up at him, but he was just a tall, blurry shadow. There was talk and laughter and music coming from inside the house. Above it the stars were in a black sky. That black, black sky.
"You all right?"
All those stars so far apart. None of them close. From far away they just looked it.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“It’s hard to see. There are only the shadows of things. She feels along the fridge to the wall and the phone, touching first her uncle’s keys, then her dead aunt’s, a woman Devon can feel judging her from the grave even though she’s only borrowing something, not stealing it. She has never stolen anything in her life, and she never will. She steps into the cool, still air of the closed garage and she sees Sick’s face. The way he looked at her as she let him in, the only one. His hair hung down and his lips were parted and as he moved inside her his eyes seemed to shine with a sweet sadness, the kind that only comes when you know something good can never, ever last. But you keep going anyway. All you can do is keep going and never quit.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“It's been six months, Nancy.'
'What's your hurry? It took me a year to get used to living with Carl. I mean, what do men do anyway? They work, eat, drink, and play games. Sex for them is in the sports and recreation category. You can't live with a man and not be lonely.'
'You think so?'
'Absolutely. Besides, once you have kids, it all changes anyway. Everything seems to make sense then.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“Letting go of the pipe in the laundry room, he could feel in his throat so many sentences from the night's reading of emails, and he needed to shout them at her now as she poured her coffee in the kitchen, its smell always such a comfort to him, but not then; that morning it was like the sweet fragrance of lilacs just before you see the corpse upon which they lie.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“She was speaking again, her voice like the chirp of a bird who has flown into a black tunnel but does not yet know it.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“... beach houses along short sandy streets. He can feel her bare forarm brushing his, and it's strange she's being so quiet. He glances down at her and she smiles up at him as if, in his silence, he's been telling a long story and she is simply listening to it.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“Somehow she was becoming the kind of woman she didn’t like, somebody who felt one way but smiled it off in a mask of cheerfulness, the kind of woman who got very good at small talk.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“She tried to stand but he had her by the hair and with his other hand he was jerking back and forth on himself, and she couldn't breathe and then he let out a groan as warm spurts fell wetly across her cheek and nose and eye, and Davey was laughing as if he'd just scored points in a game, and Luke let go of her hair and she fell back on her hands.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“Her thighs are oiled and dark, and oblivion never felt as good as it does now,”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love

“But now his body feels like some dumb beast he merely exists inside, and every now and then it lets him know it needs to do something: To eat. To piss or shit. To move or just lie down and rest.”
― Andre Dubus III, Dirty Love