Clock Dance Quotes

“I’ll just tell you what I’ve learned that has helped me,” he said. “Shall I?” “Yes, tell me,” she said, growing still. “I broke my days into separate moments,” he said. “See, it’s true I didn’t have any more to look forward to. But on the other hand, there were these individual moments that I could still appreciate. Like drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning. Working on something fine in my workshop. Watching a baseball game on TV.” She thought that over. “But…” she said. He waited. “But…is that enough?” she asked him. “Well, yes, it turns out that it is,” he said.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“I always think it’s a good sign when a man likes cats. It shows he doesn’t feel the need to be in constant control of things.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“She had tried her best to be a good mother---which to her meant a predictable mother. She had promised herself that her children would never have to worry what sort of mood she was in; they would never peek into her bedroom in the morning to see how their day was going to go. She was the only woman she knew whose prime objective was to be taken for granted.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“Sometimes Willa felt she’d spent half her life apologizing for some man’s behavior. More than half her life,”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“Marriage was often a matter of dexterity, in Willa’s experience.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“Now she settled into the dailiness of grief—not that first piercing stab but the steady, persistent ache of it, the absence that feels like a presence.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“It was beginning to get a bit cooler out, thank heaven. One thing she was never going to adjust to was how you needed constant air conditioning here. People were dependent upon it in the same way that space travelers were dependent upon their oxygen tanks. It seemed possible that if the electricity went off, they could actually die. When Willa thought about that too long, it made her feel kind of panicky.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“My wife used to say that her idea of hell would be marrying Ghandi," Ben said ... "Think about it: Ghandi was always the good one. Everyone else looked so rude and loud and self-centered by comparison.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“When she was a child she used to imagine that her mother might painlessly die somehow and her father would marry a lovely, serene woman who would sit at Willa’s bedside when she had a bad dream and lay a cool palm on her forehead.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“said, ‘Many of your fellow members probably don’t believe, either, but at least in church you put yourself in position for belief. Otherwise you reduce the possibility.’ ” “Good point,” Willa said thoughtfully. “Yes, it was a good point. But I’d given it sixty-some years by then and I figured any further developments were unlikely.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“Nobody would ever again focus his whole attention on her. Nobody would take on that watchful, appreciative look when she walked into a room.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“Sometimes Willa felt she’d spent half her life apologizing for some man’s behavior. More than half her life, actually. First Derek and then Peter, forever charging ahead while Willa trailed behind picking up the pieces and excusing and explaining.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“I broke my days into separate moments,” he said. “See, it’s true I didn’t have any more to look forward to. But on the other hand, there were these individual moments that I could still appreciate. Like drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning. Working on something fine in my workshop. Watching a baseball game on TV.” She thought that over. “But…” she said. He waited. “But…is that enough?” she asked him. “Well, yes, it turns out that it is,” he said.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“But Willa knew what she meant. She had felt that way during her own childhood; she’d felt like a watchful, wary adult housed in a little girl’s body. And yet nowadays, paradoxically, it often seemed to her that from behind her adult face a child about eleven years old was still gazing out at the world.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“Of course it seemed strange without Peter, but at least she could stay out as long as she liked without worrying she was neglecting him.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“Peter sometimes claimed - jokingly, she assumed - that the whole country should keep its clocks set to the same hour, even though that meant that some states would have to conduct their business in the dark.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“She was reminded of rainy days in her childhood when she would resign herself to staying in, reading or watching daytime TV, and then in the afternoon the sun would break through unexpectedly and she would think, Oh. I guess I can go outside now. Isn’t that…a good thing, I guess.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“Sometimes Willa felt she'd spent half her life apologising for some man's behaviour. More than half her life, actually. First Derek then Peter, forever charging ahead while Willa trailed behind picking up the pieces and excusing and explaining”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“She had fallen into particles over the course of a single evening.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“But what helped more was to walk down a crowded sidewalk sometimes, or through a busy shopping mall, and reflect that almost everyone there had suffered some terrible loss. Sometimes more than one loss. Many had lost their dearest loves, but look at them: they were managing. They were putting one foot in front of the other. Some were even smiling.
It could be done.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“these people are a family. See? They want to learn how families work and that’s what they think these customers are. Get it?” “Got it,” Willa said.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“So let me just catch you up on what is going on here,” Cheryl told her. “There’s this bunch of total strangers, see, eating lunch in a hamburger joint. All these different people on their lunch break. And these space aliens come and kidnap them and take them off to study them, because they believe”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“Coming here had not been a mistake. Willa couldn’t say exactly how she knew that, but she did.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“How come you pack your clothes in Kleenex?” she asked. Tissue paper, she meant. Willa said, “Oh, that’s just something women do when they have too much time on their hands.” Cheryl said “Huh?” and Willa laughed.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“God,” he said. “I come here to say I feel bad about your husband, and listen to me, yakking about my own little troubles.” “I wouldn’t call divorce a little trouble,” Willa said.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“She had promised herself that her children would never have to worry what sort of mood she was in; they would never peek into her bedroom in the morning to see how their day was going to go. She was the only woman she knew whose prime objective was to be taken for granted.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“turned out that Elaine was so cool and sensible that she arranged to arrive the night before the funeral and fly out right afterward. Willa wasn’t happy about that. Still, she had to admit that her literal request had been for Elaine to come to the funeral, period. Oh, they were never going to be like the sisters in Little Women!”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“she wants to wait till she graduates although me, I’m thinking this summer would be good; I mean, she could finish school in California just as well as at Kinney, so I’m hoping to talk her around, but in any case”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“She felt a lot less grateful to Derek now than she had when they were on the plane.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance

“This is a gun,” he said quietly, “and it’s loaded. Move and I shoot. You’re not allowed out of your seat, and neither is he.”
― Anne Tyler, Clock Dance