White Houses Quotes

“I have been lonely in my life but never when drinking strong coffee, wearing my fleecy slippers, and standing in my own kitchen.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“Every woman’s body is an intimate landscape. The hills, the valleys, the narrow ledges, the riverbanks, the sudden eruptions of soft or crinkling hair. Here are the plains, the fine dry slopes. Here are the woods, here is the smooth path to the only door I wish to walk through. Eleanor’s body is the landscape of my true home.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“There are people you always love, no matter what they have done to you, no matter what you have done to them.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“The function of democratic living is not to lower standards but to raise those that have been too low.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“Amelia said, “I think women—some women—regard matrimony as a highly honorable retreat from the possibility of failure in the larger world.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“We had agreed that “in love” had burned out after four years for us, the way it does for most of us, in two months or two years and, I guess, never for some lucky people. Instead of a trail of fire roaring through, those people get small candles steadily lighting the way home until death do they part, and only the young are stupid enough to think that those two old people, him gimping, her squinting, are not in love.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“Every couple has the same five arguments in their lifetime, which is really just the one, over and over, until people die or divorce. What it is depends on who you are and what your parents did to you.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“Every couple has the same five arguments in their lifetime, which is really just the one, over and over, until people die or divorce. What it is depends on who you are and what your parents did to you.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“(True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.) The country had a leader. Hired girls had”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“she talked until she was hoarse about the basic rights of every citizen: equal education, equal pay, equal representation, and equal participation. Everyone quoted her and lots of people hated her,”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“Whitman said, ‘I am as bad as the worst but, thank God, I am as good as the best.’ You ought to spend more time with people who know how bad they are.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“I don’t think people can help it. We play with fire and tell ourselves we’re just lighting a modest, necessary candle. We know discretion is called for and everything in us cries out to be seen, to spread our feathers.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“We were determined to be the people we wanted to be and not the blind, desperate people we were.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“Carny people’d punch you in the face before they’d let you tell them your troubles and strangle their own selves before they’d tell you theirs.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“love was like some shabby old footstool. Everyone used it without wanting it and no one ever gave it a moment’s thought.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“Criticism is like pain. It’s not fun but if it doesn’t hurt, no one pays attention.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“We love the attentiveness of powerful people, because it’s such a pleasant, gratifying surprise, but Eleanor was not a grand light shining briefly on the lucky little people. She reached for the soul of everyone who spoke to her, every day. She bowed her head toward yours, as if there was nothing but the time and necessary space for two people to briefly love each other.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“I got by. I lived amputated, which sounds worse than it felt. I learned to do all kinds of large and small tasks, with part of me missing, and I feel pretty sure that the people who watched me in the world thought I was entirely able-bodied.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“We think- oh, we will never forget these northern lights, but we do. What we remember is only the curling picture in the left-hand drawer (Presque Isle, Maine, 1934) or a gorgeous half-page photo in an old travel magazine, but what we saw when we held hands, lifting our chins to the sky as if we could leap into the jagged, jeweled brilliance above us, was seen for ten seconds only, and never again.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“She insulted conservatives and cowards every time she opened her mouth”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“His charm and cheer blinded you, made you deaf to your own thoughts, until all you could do was nod and smile, while the frost came down, killing you where you stood.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“(True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.)”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“When I read that I thought, I am almost fifty years old and the rest of my life will be love and loss, and when I look down the road, I see a fat old woman and her dog, is what I see.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“one”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“back.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“You are the dawn, rolling back the dark until the beach glitters and the girls return with their buckets, holding hands.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“Although I won’t pretend our paths are likely to cross, I hope you know that I will be delighted if they do.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“Those of us who knew him and needed him didn't want to stop grieving, for fear we'd step forward, toward the future, and entirely lose the trace, the smell, and the feel of him.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

“We used to say, we’re no beauties, because it was impossible to tell the truth. In bed, we were beauties. We were goddesses. We were the little girls we’d never been: loved, saucy, delighted, and delightful.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses