Who Is Maud Dixon? Quotes

“You shouldn’t have to TRY to like things . . . It’s like people who force themselves to finish a book they’re not enjoying. Just close it! Go find another story!”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“She sometimes wished her mother were outright cruel; then at least Florence could cut ties without feeling guilty. Instead, they were locked in this endless masquerade: her mother supplying encouragement undercut by disappointment and Florence responding with affection and contrition she didn’t feel.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“There was a world beyond her world, Florence knew, that was entirely foreign to her. Every once in a while, someone took this other world in their hands and rattled it, dislodging a small piece that fell at her feet with a plink. She gathered up these fragments like an entomologist gathers rare bugs to pin to a board.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“In general, she said, women tended to spend too much time considering consequences; by the time they finally made a decision, the men were already there, forging alliances, crossing battle lines, breaking things. Mistakes, Helen said, can always be rewritten.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“If I mess up, I mess up. I find that people in general are way too scared of making mistakes. Sure, make a plan and do some research, but when it’s time to act, my god, just act.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“It’s like people who force themselves to finish a book they’re not enjoying. Just close it! Go find another story!”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“Doesn’t it bother you that no one knows it’s you?” Florence asked when she could no longer resist. “That you wrote Mississippi Foxtrot?” “Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” Florence nodded then said, “Sorry, what?” “It’s Latin, from Ovid. It means, ‘He lives well who is well hidden.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“voracious reader, and it dawned on her that a corporate job in Tampa or Jacksonville was not, in fact, the be-all and end-all. Something lay beyond that point. Florence had haunted the library, desperate for glimpses of lives unlike her own. She had a penchant for stories about glamorous, doomed women like Anna Karenina and Isabel Archer. Soon, however, her fascination shifted from the women in the stories to the women who wrote them. She devoured the diaries of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, who were far more glamorous and doomed than any of their characters. But without a doubt, Florence’s Bible was Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Admittedly, she spent more time scrolling through photos of Joan Didion in her sunglasses and Corvette Stingray than actually reading her, but the lesson stuck. All she had to do was become a writer, and her alienation would magically transform into evidence of brilliance rather than a source of shame. When she looked into the future, she saw herself at a beautiful desk next to a window, typing her next great book. She could never quite see the words on the screen, but she knew they were brilliant and would prove once and for all that she was special. Everyone would know the name Florence Darrow. And who’d trade that for a condo?”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“Florence’s mother liked to imagine a life of diamonds and gilt for her daughter. But this, this, was the life Florence wanted. A blue-and-white teacup stuffed with clementine peels. A tangle of white ranunculus in a ceramic pitcher on the windowsill. Amanda had once put a vase of those same flowers on her desk at work. The whole place looked like a painting by Vermeer. And it was cold. Chilly gusts rattled the windows in their frames. Someone had told Florence once that glass was actually a liquid that settled slowly, over eons; that was why in old houses the windows were always thicker at the bottom than at the top. Was that true? Florence didn’t care. In the same way she couldn’t understand why people were so determined to expose Maud Dixon’s identity, she couldn’t understand why they needed to pin things down, turn poetry into fact. Wasn’t poetry better? Why would you turn something beautiful into something quotidian?”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“Death is the most transformative event in anyone’s existence, she thought, yet once it has happened, it doesn’t matter to that person anymore. There’s no person left. At that point, any significance it has fragments and scatters. Its impact is diffused among the survivors.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“Her sense of self slipped from her as easily as a coat slips off the back of a chair.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“Florence laughed. “He’s sweet.” “Sweet is just a polite way of saying dull.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“She was so hemmed in all the time by timidity and insecurity that every once in a while some self-destructive impulse in her demanded brash action. It was the same impulse that had made her send those photos to Simon. She had no control over it.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Vem är Maud Dixon?

“Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” Florence nodded then said, “Sorry, what?” “It’s Latin, from Ovid. It means, ‘He lives well who is well hidden.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“She was running out the clock on Florence, on the person she currently was. It was a pleasant thought. She was sick to death of herself. That was one of the problems of always being stuck in your own head; the outside world isn’t loud enough to drown out the constant monologue on the inside. The same shit, day after day. Does she like me? Do I look okay? Will I ever be happy? Will I ever be successful? It was like listening to the same song over and over every day for years. Didn’t they torture people that way?”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“They were clues that would one day cohere into something larger, she didn’t know yet what. A disguise; an answer; a life.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“At times she found Lucy’s friendship stifling, though if pressed, she would have to admit that the extremity of Lucy’s devotion gave her a sense of comfort that far outweighed the claustrophobia, perhaps because Florence’s mother had trained her early on to recognize only the most acute forms of emotion. Anything tempered felt cold and false to her.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“If you spend your life looking for fairness you’ll be disappointed. Fairness doesn’t exist. And if it did, it would be boring. It would leave no room for the unexpected. But if you search for greatness—for beauty, for art, for transcendence—those are where the rewards are. That is what makes life worth living.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“She’d once read a biography of the artist René Magritte that Agatha had edited. It claimed that during his early years, when critics had scoffed at his odd, unconventional paintings, he’d supported himself by forging works by Picasso and Braque.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“there are some girls in there who just want to be, like, Instagram influencers, and yes, I’ll admit that maybe that path is slightly less noble than, say, Gandhi’s.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“I said nothing about any actual community. Haven’t you heard? We killed them all off. My community is me. And I don’t feel accountable to anyone outside of it—human, avian, or otherwise.” Florence was taken aback. Was that really something you could just decide? That you didn’t owe anything to anyone?”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“the twelfth century. The clay was a warm ochre color”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“They were jealous, of course—jealousy being a natural corollary to ambition.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“poring over pictures online. She longed”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“I can barely muster up enough empathy to cover the humans I know. Every day we’re asked to feel sorry for refugees from Syria and gay men in Chechnya and Muslims in Myanmar. It’s too much. The human mind wasn’t built to assimilate so much suffering. It was designed to produce just enough empathy to cover its own little community. So please don’t ask me to expend my dwindling reserves on an owl.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“He had touched her tenderly, accommodatingly, in a way she found slightly revolting.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who is Maud Dixon?

“Florence downed the rest of her drink and went to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. There were two spigots, one for hot water and one for cold. She held her hand under the hot one until she couldn’t bear it anymore. She’d discovered in college that this particular ritual was the best remedy for anger and despair.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“But if your mother wore tight clothes and slathered on tanning oil and thought Philip Roth was a discount furniture store in Jacksonville, where did that leave you? What if you wanted a different life? How did you get from A to B? How did you become the type of person who belonged in B?”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“By taking away that sacred pain, the medical-industrial complex is effectively eroding the mother-child relationship. That pain bonds you. It’s an honor and a privilege to become a mother. You have to earn it.”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?