The Muralist Quotes

“Americans do not understand that artists are different from ordinary people. That this does not make them insane. This is what makes them artists.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“It’s all the horrors rolled into one. Not just guns and soldiers but families . . .” Alizée’s voice grew hoarse. “The children.” “And the world’s refusal to help. It breaks my heart to think we turned our backs when they asked so little of us.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“My ex-husband always claimed I would never become a great artist because I had a happy childhood.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“This story belonged to the girl clenching a letter in the cold glare of a December morning, waiting to speak her next lines, take her next action, follow the script. Alizée watched from the audience, the first row actually. It was an amazing performance and Alizée felt for the poor thing, but it was just a play. In a play the heroine always overcomes the obstacles. Always finds a way to save her loved ones, to save all the others, too. It would be hard, it would be dangerous, but she would do it. Because that’s what heroines do.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“A surge of exhaustion almost knocked her over. She was so tired. More tired than she’d ever been.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“We do not know what the future holds, and I try not to think beyond the present.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“although I know we are linked always in our hearts.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“now she didn’t feel much beyond exhaustion, a deep, profound tiredness.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“Her actions were calm, purposeful, yet covered with a patina of worry. The poor thing. What a terrible turn of events.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“But after so many years of “if onlys,” she knew these thoughts were pointless.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“It gets easier,” she said, “but it never goes away.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“the familiar punch of loss taking her breath away.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“Like mother like daughter, the curse of the only child.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“He lolled mindlessly, miserably, in the dark place, not wanting to be there, but unable to go anywhere else. He was pressed down by anxiety, weighted in place by an all-encompassing self-loathing, his mind turned into crystalized molasses: sharp, impenetrable, and unbearably painful. But when the darkness began to loosen its hold, as it invariably did, the suicidal demands became more insistent.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“or feel that gnawing emptiness in the back part of my brain where I imagine my creativity lives, I wonder about my choices.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“cautiously. “Mark Rothko? Is that when he got Alizée’s paintings from Eleanor Roosevelt?” “He gets the painting from the other one.” I sat up, senses heightened. “What other one?” “She gives him the one he carries with him all the time.” “Is it big?” I asked. “Red, white, and blue? Or does it look like lily pads?” “Bloom. That is where we go first. We are worried she is . . .” Grand-mère made a circular motion with her forefinger. “She is not all there in the head.” “The painting looks like blooms? Like flowers?” Lily Pads could be interpreted that way. “Did you go with him to visit Eleanor Roosevelt?”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“She couldn’t go looking for loss. Of any kind. Because it would awaken those old feelings, the ones she kept tightly coiled inside, the ones she knew she couldn’t survive a second time. And they were already stirring. She could feel them as if they were living creatures, hibernating snakes sensing spring, sensing the dread that grew within her at every news report out of Europe, at every letter. Waiting to rip her apart.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“Aside from being famous, what do Beethoven, Mark Rothko, Hemingway, Francis Ford Coppola, Van Gogh, Alvin Ailey, Robin Williams, Sylvia Plath, Balzac, Jackson Pollock, Edgar Allan Poe, Axl Rose, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf have in common? They all suffered from some form of mental illness. Even”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“So easy to forget what you didn’t want to remember.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“beer was procured and pushed into”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

“You know,” Franklin said pointedly, “this is a Protestant country, and the Jews are here under sufferance. It’s my decision who gets visas and who doesn’t, and it’s up to the citizenry to go along with what I want.”
― B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist