Maggie Brown & Others Quotes

“The nature of reaching, the nature of whispered entreaties, a thousand variations on the same invitation, is that both the reaching of hands and the question in question invariably lead to moments of complete incompleteness. Because the upshot of coupling is uncoupling. The essence of association is disassociation. Because you can fuck till you're blue, but at a certain point the inevitable nightly drawing apart happens for good. [Walt Kaplan/23 Kaplan's Furniture]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“Tomorrow I'm going to Wong's, and I'm going to listen to the music of my own lack of thoughts." / "Go," Gus says. "Nobody's stopping you." / "You don't see the beauty?" Walt says. / "Beauty of what? History of what?" Alf says. / "Everything. Shoelaces, farts, love, death, cantaloupes--all I have to do is remember." [Walt Kaplan/13 Gus's Highland Spa]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“Our history is not a continuous line; it's a circle we draw over and over on a blotter. Chicago, Fall River, Chicago. Thomas Carlyle, the man from Arkansas, my own daughter, Thomas Carlyle. Work, not work. The terrors of the sleeper and the helplessness of the awake. [Walt Kaplan/Rachel Plotkin]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“But hadn't she heard that for someone who's made up their mind, everything becomes so much lighter? It made sense, in a way. Like suddenly nothing costs you anything anymore?”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“...To ensure that we don't merely exist in the dead present? ... That the oblivion of the now as opposed to the ecstasy of looking back--but wait, wait, if the present is the past, you fool, dissolving this very moment--then it is incumbent upon us now, now, to create the past--so obvious! so rudimentary!--it's the uncreated past that is dead [Walt Kaplan/August, Bedroom]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“And she'd apologize for what what she remembered and what she forgot. A lot depended on what they both forgot. [Montreal]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“That our own standing as part of an integrated universe not only allows us but, by singular divine fiat, compels--induces--us to connect, to merge, to unify--”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“Some persons are made more perfect by what befalls them, as is whatever befalls them can never make them less, can never bring them low, as it might others. --Gina Berriault, "The Tea Ceremony”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“A story: lurks. A story, a good story, is just out of reach, always. Wake up in an unfamiliar darkness, in a room you don't seem to recognize. Flip on the light. Nothing there. It's your room again. But didn't you feel a presence in the dark? The presence of someone you once knew? Someone you once loved?”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“if you tried to take into account all the heartbreak behind the lighted windows of a single city on a single night, your head would explode clean off your neck." [Ineffectual Tribute to Len]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“For me what reverberates, what I often relive and relive, are those times that were cut short, times so fleeting they hardly even happened. [Maggie Brown]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“Faking it was the only way she could keep the visions away. When you think there's going to be great change and it doesn't happen--what else is there to do but fake being who you once were? [Padanaram]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“You could stand there two hours; you could stand there five minutes. The Pacific didn't give a hoot about time. It would eat a year for breakfast. Is that why they'd always been so drawn to it? Is that why, still, they came and stood at the edge, day after day? Its blessed indifference? [Pacific]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“And I thought, Holy fuck, we're not dead. Together. As in not dead yet. Think of all the years we will be. Our bodies turn to caramel. [Naked Man Hides]”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“Something occurs, in the motion of the present, but it's already over. Because even then, even as she watched, she was already moving away from it, already thinking about how years from now she might tell someone about this.”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories

“I only want to repeat what you already know. There is no limit to how far a person can fall in America.”
― Peter Orner, Maggie Brown & Others: Stories