Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Quotes

“Everything,' his father said, 'comes down to time in the end--to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't sadness wishing time back again? Even big things--even mourning a death: aren't you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos--ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? ... Isn't it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“When you have children, you're obligated to live.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“I'm falling into disrepair”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“She remembered the feel of wind on summer nights - how it billows through the house and wafts the curtains and smells of tar and roses”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“dying, you don't get to see how it all turns out. Questions you have asked will go unanswered forever. Will this one of my children settle down? Will that one learn to be happier? Will I ever discover what was meant by such-and-such?”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“You think we're a family,' Cody said, turning back. 'You think we're some jolly, situation-comedy family when we're in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Cody cut into a huge wedge of pie and gave some thought to food--to its inexplicable, loaded meaning in other people's lives. Couldn't you classify a person, he wondered, purely by examining his attitude toward food?”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“It was funny, in her old age, to look back and see for how short a period her nest had NOT been empty. Relatively speaking, it was nothing - empty far longer than full. so much of herself had been invested in those children; who could believe how briefly they'd been with her.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“When you come [to a baseball game] in person, you direct your own focus, you know? The TV or the radio men, they might focus on the pitcher when you want to see what first base is doing; and you don't have any choice but to accept it.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“I’m worried if I come too close, they’ll say I’m overstepping. They’ll say I’m pushy, or … emotional, you know. But if I back off, they might think I don’t care. I really, honestly believe I missed some rule that everyone else takes for granted; I must have been absent from school that day. There’s this narrow little dividing line I somehow never located.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Everything comes down to time in the end - to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't happiness expecting something time is going to bring you? Isn't sadness wishing time back again? Even big things - even mourning a death: aren't you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos - ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? Long-ago people smiling, a child who would be an old lady now, a cat that died, a flowering plant that's long since withered away and the pot itself broken or misplaced...Isn't it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Ah, God, it's barbaric, however you look at it,' he told Ruth.
'What, cremation?' she asked.
'Death.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Their growing up amounted, therefore, to a gradual dimming of the light at her bedroom door, as if they took some radiance with them as they moved away from her. She should have planned for it better, she sometimes thought. She should have made a few friends or joined a club. But she wasn’t the type. It wouldn’t have consoled her.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Always have a purpose,' his father used to tell him. 'Act like you're heading someplace purposeful, and none of the low-life will mess with you.' He had also said, 'Never trust a man who starts his sentences with "Frankly,"' and 'Nine tenths of a good sidearm pitch is in the flick of the wrist,' and 'If you want to sell a person something, look off elsewhere as you're speaking, not straight into his eyes.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“with your family, if with no one else, you have to keep on trying.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“It was typical of him that he lacked the taste to make a final exit. He spent too long at his farewells, chatting in the doorway, letting in the cold.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“The child didn't wake. She only nestled closer and sighed. So after all, Ezra could have put his coat beneath her head. He had missed an opportunity. It was like missing a train - or something more important, something that would never come again. There was no explanation for the grief that suddenly filled him.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“...sometimes I stand there watching them and I see they believe they're completely special, the first, the only people ever to feel the way they're feeling. They believe they'll live happily ever after, that all the other marriages going on around them - those ordinary, worn-down, flattened-in arrangements - why, those are nothing like they'll have. They'll never setlle for so little. And it makes me mad. I can't help it, Cody. I know it's selfish, but I can't help it. I want to ask them, Who do you think you are, anyhow? Do you imagine you're unique? Do you really suppose I was always this old difficult woman?
Cody, listen. I was special too, once, to someone. I could just reach out and lay a fingertip on his arm while he was talking and he would instantly fall silent and get all confused. I had hopes; I was courted; I had the most beautiful wedding. I had three lovely pregnancies, where every morning I woke up knowing something perfect would happen in nine months, eights months, seven months...so it seemed I was full of light; it was light and plans that filled me. And then while you children were little, why, I was the center of your worlds! I was everything to you! It was Mother this and Mother that, and 'Where's Mother? Where's she gone to?' and the moment you came in from school, 'Mother? Are you home?' It's not fair, Cody. It's really not fair; now I'm old and I walk along unnoticed, just like anyone else. It strikes me as unjust, Cody.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“You almost died,” a nurse told her. But that was nonsense. Of course she wouldn’t have died; she had children. When you have children, you’re obligated to live.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“There’s my downfall, son. I mean with anyone, any one of these lady friends, I just can’t resist a person I make happy.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“I mean, if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad. And Cody certainly catalogues; he’s ruining his life with his catalogues.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“You’re old for so much longer than you’re young, she thinks. Really it hardly seems fair.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“She remembered the feel of wind on summer nights - how it billows through the house and wafts the curtains and smells of tar and roses. How a sleeping baby weighs so heavily on your shoulder, like ripe fruit. What privacy it is to walk in the rain beneath the drip and crackle of your own umbrella.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“O dead one, why did you die in the springtime? You haven't yet tasted the squash, or the cucumber salad.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Let it be" is the theme that dominates his existence. He sees himself as being ruled by a dreamy mood of acceptance that was partly the source of all his happiness and partly his undoing.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“He thought of how it would be if his father returned some time in he future, when Cody was a man. "Look at what I've accomplished," Cody would tell him. "Notice where I've got to, how far I've come without you." Was it something I said? Was it something I did? Was it something I didn't do, that made you go away?”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“See... what it was, I guess: it was the grayness; grayness of things; half-right-and-half-wrongness of things. Everything tangled, mingled, not perfect any more. I couldn't take that. Your mother could, but not me. Yes sir, I have to hand it to your mother.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant