The One-in-a-Million Boy Quotes

“Because the story of your life never starts at the beginning.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“You know, one meets so many people, the years pass and pass, but there are certain times, certain people— . . . They take up room. So much room. I was married to Howard for twenty-eight years and yet he made only a piddling dent in my memory. A little nick. But certain others, they move in and make themselves at home and start flapping their arms in the story you make of your life. They have a wingspan. . . .”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“Convince is for thought; persuade is for action. You couldn’t convince me that taping my horrible old-lady voice was a good idea, but you persuaded me to do it anyway, didn’t you, you little dickens?”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“His cheeks were all pinked up. Travel agreed with him, and she might have known: people like Quinn, always running from themselves, loved the road.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“He'd read obsessively-...-picking up linguistic baubles like a crow mining a roadside.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“But here's the thing Ona. Howard wrote that song for you.' Quinn had never been more sure of anything. 'I think he wrote all his songs for you, Ona, for young and lovely you.'
'Now you're talking foolish.'
'He wrote them for you, and you refused them because he didn't know how to give them to you.' How could he, living his shadow of a life, floundering in the sludge of grief and failure?
'Have you been drinking?'
'Listen to me,' he said. 'You 're the glittering girl with the cherry-wood hair. You're the angel's breath and sunlight.'
'Oh, for heaven's sake.' She sat up crossly, her tufted hair seeming to quiver. 'Quinn Porter,' she said, 'I never took you for a romantic.'
'Howard Stanhope loved you,' he declared. 'I thought you should know.'
'Well, all right.'
'I thought you should know, Ona.'
'Thank you.'
'People should know these things”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“...each chime pecking a pinhole in the sheeted dark until the last layers shred completely and the light pours in and in.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“But even talented people, sooner or later, cracked their heads against their own personal ceilings.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“...imagining her name in a record book. All those demure round letters in the first name, followed by the stalky surprise of the surname. Ona Vitkus.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“the former free-floating with vowels, the latter fortressed by consonants.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“She died that evening and left me, in Louise fashion, sitting in ten kinds of dark.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“A busload of pilgrims today on journeys they never chose, having once believed themselves born for more than this.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“Convince is for thought; persuade is for action.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“He had not loved his son enough. This knowledge lived like a malignancy on his heart.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“They were on a first-name basis now, united in female solidarity after a twenty-minute conversation about cats. How women cemented alliances over less than nothing impressed him anew.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“Certain things, examined in the frozen light of retrospect, were simply unforgivable. He”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“It does take time. From the day I laid eyes on her, I wished Miss Louise Grady could just once look at me and see me. For years I kept that twinkling chance like a jewel in a box. That's what unrequited means.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“Your sister strikes me as the type of driver who raises the rates for everybody else.” “Good”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“In the old lady’s house. It was just like he wrote in his diary. There was, quote, magic afoot.” Belle managed something like a laugh despite her sorrow, for the boy’s syntactical oddities had always pleased her. He’d read obsessively—instruction manuals, record books, novels far too old for him—picking up linguistic baubles like a crow mining a roadside.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“You know, one meets so many people, the years pass and pass, but there are certain times, certain people— . . . They take up room. So much room. I was married to Howard for twenty-eight years and yet he made only a piddling dent in my memory. A little nick. But certain others, they move in and make themselves at home and start flapping their arms in the story you make of your life. They have a wingspan.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“Because the story of your life never starts at the beginning. Don’t they teach you anything in school?”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“When he sauntered into the house and took a brownie without asking, she realized how long it had been since someone paid her the compliment of presumption.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“Gradually, the darkness sculpted itself into air and object, the appointments of her room materializing as smoky shapes: a skyline of perfume bottles on her dresser...”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“During the Battle of Saipan,” Ona murmured, “my Frankie’s job was to pull other boys from the tides. Boys who churned up and then fell apart in his hands. The very same shipmates he liked so well. His job was to remove their dog tags, weight down their remains in loops of chain, and return them to the seas.” “My God,” Belle whispered. “Twenty years old and his paid employment for the United States Navy was to wrap other mothers’ sons in chains. How did my son manage a job like that? How does any son?” She”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“alcoholic. To Quinn, for whom alcohol was a touchy simile, the truth was this: playing guitar was the single occasion in his slight and baffling life when he had the power to deliver exactly the thing another human being wanted. He”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“We didn’t call it World War I. How could we imagine there’d be a second?”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“People don't write their own endings'" he said.
"Well, I'm planning on writing mine.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“Потому что история человеческой жизни никогда не начинается с начала

Благодаря ему я почувствовала себя незаменимой, а за это чувство можно все отдать. Никогда в жизни я не чувствовала себя незаменимой. Я слишком любила свою работу.

Для многих людей война - это не тема для разговоров, а камень на сердце.

Некоторые вещи, особенно не заслуживающие прощения, удается рассмотреть лишь в застывшем свете времени.

Дети благодарны за то, что им дают. А взрослым вечно мало.

Поток информации так благотворно действует на психику, словно транквилизатор, это так умиротворяет: собирать факты, располагать их друг за другом наподобие забора, построить из них загончик, в котором все упорядочено, и укрыться там от непредсказуемостей человеческой судьбы.

А я говорила, что Луиза научила меня танцевать? Прямо там, в моей гостиной на Хай-стрит. Подобные глупости всегда происходят зимой, когда люди так изголодались по солнцу, что плохо соображают.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“Where to, Ona?” Belle asked, slowing down. They were on a first-name basis now, united in female solidarity after a twenty-minute conversation about cats. How women cemented alliances over less than nothing impressed him anew.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

“a thousand songs that made people bite their lips and bob their heads, recalling a place they once lived, a person they once loved, a version of themselves they’d forgotten.”
― Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy