Voices in the Night Quotes

“we are happy to be here, where the sky has always seemed a little bluer, the leaves a little greener, than in other towns we know.”
― Steven Millhauser, Voices in the Night: Stories

“She was wary, trained to expect little of life, grateful for small pleasures, on her guard against promises, accustomed to making the best of things, in the habit of both wanting and not daring to want something more. Now Miracle Polish has come along, with its air of swagger and its taunting little whisper. Why not? it seemed to say. Why on earth not? But the mirrors that strengthened me, that filled me with new life, made Monica bristle. Did she feel that I preferred a false version of her, a glittering version, to the flesh-and-blood Monica with her Band-Aids and big knees and her burden of sorrows? What drew me was exactly the opposite. In the shining mirrors I saw the true Monica, the hidden Monica, the Monica buried beneath years of discouragement. Far from escaping into a world of polished illusions, I was able to see, in the depths of those mirrors, the world no longer darkened by diminishing hopes and fading dreams. There, all was clear, all was possible.”
― Steven Millhauser, Voices in the Night

“Was there a turn, a change in the atmosphere? To single out a particular moment is to distort the record, for it suggests a clear history of cause and effect that can only betray our sense of what really happened.”
― Steven Millhauser, Voices in the Night