Await Your Reply Quotes

“I never wanted to get to a point in my life where I knew what was going to happen next. I felt like most people just couldn't wait until they found themselves settled down into a routine and they didn't have to think about the next day, or the next year, or the next decade because it was all planned out for them. I can't understand how people can settle for having just one life.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“So this was what it felt like to lose yourself. Again. To let go of your future and let it rise up and up until finally you couldn't see it anymore, and you knew that you had to start over.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“This was what real grief felt like—she had never truly felt it before. All the times she had been sad, all the times she had wept in her life, all the glooms and melancholies were merely moods, mere passing whims. Grief was a different thing altogether.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“At a certain point, you must be able to slip loose. At a certain point, you found that you had been set free.
You could be anyone, he thought.
You could be anyone.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“The circumstances of life-the events of life-the people around me in life-do not make me the way I am. They reveal the way I am.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“He had grown fond of the old proprietress, Mrs. Matalov, who had been a magician's assistant back in the 1930s, and who now, even at ninety-three, had the stoic dignity of a beautiful woman who was about to be cut in half.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“The pirates would kiss Hayden, and sometimes they would cut off a hank of hair - 'as a reminder of yer kisses, me lad' - and one of them even cut off a piece of his earlobe.
This particular pirate was Bill McGregor, and he was the one Hayden feared the most. Bill McGregor was the worst of them - and at night when everyone else was asleep, Bill McGregor would come looking for Hayden, his step slow and hollow on the planks of the deck, his voice a deep whisper.
Boy,' he would murmur. 'where are you, boy?'
After Bill McGregor cut off the piece of Hayden's earlobe, he decided that he wanted more. Every time he caught Hayden, he would cut a small piece off of him. The skin of an elbow, the tip of a finger, a piece of his lip. He would grip the squirming Hayden and cut a piece off of him, and then Bill McGregor would eat the piece of flesh.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“Does a human life, a "personality," exist as a single thread that can be followed through time? Is the "me" of 20 years ago the same "me" that exists now? Will I still be me in 20 years?”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“We see things not as they are, but as we are. Because it is the ‘I’ behind the ‘eye’ that does the seeing.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“and the thing that shocked her the most was how quickly such absences began to close. even after a few weeks, you could see how soon her parents would be forgotten, how their presence became an absence, and then...what? What did you call an absence that ceased to become an absence? what do you call a hole that has been filled in?”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“He was surprised at how useless his mind was.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“Anxiety!” he said. “I’ve been there, plenty of times! And, you know, it’s particularly hard during the first one, especially, because you’re so invested in that idea of self. You grew up with that concept—you think there’s a real you—and you have some longstanding attachments, people you’ve known, and you start to think about them. People you have to leave behind—”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“circumstances of life— The events of life— The people around me in life— Do not make me the way I am. They reveal the way I am.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“On the seat beside him, in between him and his father, Ryan's severed hand is resting on a bed of ice in an eight-quart Styrofoam cooler.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“Above the wrist? Or below the wrist?”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“If you could have dozens of lesser lives, didn't that add up to one big one?”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“Imagine the parts of yourself disassembled; imagine, for example, that nothing is left of you but a severed hand in an ice cooler. Perhaps there is one of your loved ones who could identify even this small piece. Here: the lines on your palm. The texture of your knuckles and wrinkled skin at the joints in the middle of your fingers. Calluses, scars. The shape of your nails.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply

“I understand that she was very unhappy, and maybe she was so devastated by her mother's death that she couldn't stand to face it. But who just abandons their family in that way? What kind of person decides that they can throw everything away and reinvent themselves? As if you could just discard the parts of your life that you didn't want anymore.”
― Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply