The Hour I First Believed Quotes

“Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“A woman who surrenders her freedom need not surrender her dignity.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“I don't know. Maybe we're all chaos theorists. Lovers of pattern and predictability, we're scared shitless of explosive change. But we're fascinated by it, too. Drawn to it. Travelers tap their brakes to ogle the mutilation and mangled metal on the side of the interstate, and the traffic backs up for miles. Hijacked planes crash into skyscrapers, breached levees drown a city, and CNN and the networks rush to the scene so that we can all sit in front of our TVs and feast on the footage. Stare, stunned, at the pandemonium--the devils let loose from their cages.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“that's the funny thing about mazes: what's baffling on the ground begins to makes sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself". (p. 717)”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Most helpful, Mr. Caelum," she said. "Very, very useful information. And now, shall we hear from Saint Augustine?"

I shrugged. "Why not?" I said

Dr. P read from a blood-red leather book. "My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry.... Where could my heart find refuge from itself? Where could I go, yet leave myself behind?"

She closed the book, then reached across the table and took Maureen's hand in hers. "Does that passage speak to you?" she asked. Mo nodded and began to cry. "And so, Mr. Caelum, good-bye."

Because the passage had spoken to me, too, it took me a few seconds to react. "Oh," I said. "You want me to leave?"

"I do. Yes, yes.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“sometimes when you go looking for what you want, you run right into what you need.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Sarcasm is a suit of armor.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“It's like there's this wave coming toward me, but there's nothing I can do about it. And then it reaches me, crashes over me and...and I'm done for another day. I just give up. Give in to it. Because how do you stop a wave?

You don't. And you're wise to recognize your powerlessness to do so. But what you can do is learn how to negotiate this wave. Work within the context of its inevitability.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“I wasn't a cynic; I was a banged-up realist.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“..."I love you" was just three meaningless words without the actions that went with them”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“It just wasn't for me, and anyway, those people were a lot more far gone than I was. More in my father's league than mine. I just cut back a little. Less beer and liquor, more jogging. I was fine.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“I do believe that there's life after love, and also that there is love, still, after a life is over.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“[Writing about themselves] gives them wings, so that they can rise above the confounding maze of their lives and, from that perspective, begin to see the patterns and dead ends of their pasts, and a way out. That's the funny thing about mazes; what's baffling on the ground begins to make sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“...there was no shorthand for "I'm sorry." You were obliged to speak those two words.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Zinnia always wants to hug me and pat me because she has a boy my same age named Melvin. I said maybe some day Melvin could come play at our farm, and I could bring him to the maze and show him the shortcuts. Zinnia started crying. That’s when I seen that she has freckles.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“The non-jocks, the readers, the gay kids, the ones starting to stew about social injustice: for these kids, "letting your freak flag fly" is both self discovery and self defense. You cry for this bunch at the mandatory pep assemblies. Huddled together, miserably, in the upper reaches of the bleachers, wearing their oversized raincoats and their secondhand Salvation Army clothes, they stare down at the school-sanctioned celebration of the A list students. They know bullying, these kids--especially the ones who frefuse to exist under the radar. They're tripped in the hallway, shoved against lockers, pelted with Skittles in the lunchroom. For the most part, their tormentors are stealth artists.

The freaks know where there's refuge: I the library, the theater program, art class, creative writing.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“God, that’s always the thing you have to decide with high school kids: what to make an issue of, what to let go.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“We lived, lulled, on the fault line of chaos. Change could come explosively, and out of nowhere.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Vicarious traumatization. It can happen to those who bear secondary witness to the traumas of others.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Our ancestors move along with us, in underground rivers and springs too deep for chaos to reach.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“For all I know God may be nothing more or nothing less than the sound of the moving water outside your window.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“What if, that afternoon in my office, I had stood and risked fatherhood? Offered him a pair of sheltering arms? Would it have been enough to keep him from going down there and doing what he did? What if? What if? What if? ...”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“... you know what was really messing me up when I got down there to Pittsburgh? Was how young he seemed. He kept asking me things like what did I think of Kanye West's music, and did I think he should hold on to Kevin Garnett in this fantasy basketball league he was in or trade him. And how he wasn't just in this league; he was commissioner of it. Like that was some big mark of distinction: commissioner of make-believe. And I wanted to slam him, one-handed, against the wall, the way he used to do to me, and scream in his face, 'Stop it! Act your age!' ... I didn't do it, though. I wanted to, but I couldn't. 'Honor thy father,' you know what I'm saying? So instead, I grabbed my car keys, got out of there, and took off. It was messing with my head, you know? You get out of there alive, more or less, wait for your father to come see you at the hospital you're stuck at, and when you finally go to see him, he's younger than you are.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“What fools men are, and what an evil thing is war.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Explosive bifurcation is the sudden transition that wrenches the system out of one order, and into another.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“He who goes questing for what he wants may discover, along the way, what he needs.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Mostly, the women want to write about themselves, and it helps them, you know? Gives them wings, so that they can rise above the confounding maze of their lives and, from that perspective, begin to see the patterns and dead ends of their pasts, and a way out. That’s the funny thing about mazes: what’s baffling on the ground begins to make sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“They said that, after the explosion, I was wandering around in a daze, gushing like Old Faithful, and trying to pick up pieces of my body with a hand that wasn’t there anymore.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed