The Hero of This Book Quotes

“She loved being alive and in the world; being alive and in the world with her was like dancing with someone who really knew how to lead.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“I've always hated the notion, in life or in fiction, that the human personality is a puzzle to be solved, that we are a single flashback away from understanding why this person is cruel to her children, why that man has a dreamy, downcast look. A human being is not a lock and the past is not a key.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“Don’t trust a writer who gives out advice. Writers are suckers for pretty turns of phrase with only the ring of truth.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“As for me, I don't think writing is that hard, as long as you're comfortable with failure on every single level.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“My mother's favorite cats were male and nervous and needed her. "Come to Mommy," my mother would say to one of them. "Yes, I love you, too."
"You are not that cat's mother," I said, sitting on the sofa during a visit.
"Don't listen to her," said my mother.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“My grandmother had earned, besides her JD, her GC: Graduate Corsetiere. That is, she was trained to fit girdles and brassieres and liked, to my great discomfort, to sit next to me on a bench at the Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines, Iowa, and mutter what underwear passing women would look better in.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“But he and my mother knew: When you’re old, safety is overrated. Safety is the bossy Irish lady, who is, after all, your employee, taking away your wineglass, saying, “That’s enough, that’s enough now, that’s enough now, darlin’.” Safety puts you in a nursing home and turns you over regularly so that you do not die in your sleep. You could be kept for years if you weren’t careful, like a roped-off chair in a museum that nobody is allowed to sit in, which makes it only something shaped like a chair. Watch out for safety. It will make you no longer yourself, only an object shaped that way.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“My mother would hate me saying any of this. My father, too. It didn’t matter how unprivate you were: If what you had to say about your life impinged on the privacy of others, then you shouldn’t say it. My mother loved stories, though, particularly stories about herself, and she is, I think, the hero of this book, which she would like.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“I’d seen her sleeping face so many times before. It was easy to imagine that she might wake at any time. Not all the way: The sleep was too deep for that; the sleep was a well. But I could imagine her opening her sleepy eyes. If her eyes were open, I could imagine her looking at me. If she looked at me, I could imagine her recognizing me. If she recognized me, I could imagine her smiling ruefully, full of rue, full of rue with a garnish of reproach. If she could smile ruefully and reproachfully, I could imagine her saying something, Let’s get out of here, or Let’s blow this pop stand, or Damnation, her favorite swear. If she could swear—”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“There is something wrong with a person who loves ballpoint pens. I believe nothing so deeply as this.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“My parents disapproved of very little that I did. They didn’t approve, either: Whatever opinions they had about what I did, they kept to themselves. They believed my life was my own business. This, I understand now, is a great gift, though a gift that comes without kvelling.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“Once somebody is dead, the world reveals all the things they might have enjoyed if they weren’t.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“Everyone knows that it’s noble to go to museums unaccompanied. Look at us solitary exhibition gawkers: We pause to read the captions, we wander the rooms at a thoughtful speed, we think things, and therefore we’re allowed to drink early and often.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“Never give up your metaphoric bad habits, the way your obsessions make themselves visible in your words. Tell yourself that one day a scholar will write a paper on them, an x-ray of your psyche, with all of your quirks visible like breaks in bones, both healed and fresh.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“When I'd asked her about what she might like to happen after she died, she said, "I plan to die on trash night, so I can be put out in a Hefty bag." Also, she was a cheapskate: She disapproved of spending on the dead what could go to the living.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“Grief, as I understood it - grief and I were acquainted - is the kind of loss that sets you on fire as you struggle to put it out.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“I sponged off knickknacks, including the owls that my mother collected, still a manageable quantity. Soon enough they would become an infestation caused by the good intentions and generosity of the many people who adored her.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“My parents were a sight gag. Opposites otherwise, too. One shy but given to monologues, one outgoing and inclined to listen. One with a temper; one affable, sometimes enragingly so. Opposite in every way but their bad habits, which is the secret to a happy marriage and also the makings of a catastrophe.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“Her memories for unhappiness and misery were terrible. Maybe she willed this into being and maybe it was neurological, but somehow I have inherited this tendency - of all my inheritances, it is my favorite, the most useful, though I do remember some grudges.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“I’d performed numerous calculations on the abacus of my soul concerning the price of the room and the loveliness of the slipper tub.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

“Sometimes in Texas as I walked, I would suddenly feel the presence of all the hidden guns around me, as though I were an x-ray machine. Here in London, I knew that not a single civilian—or police officer, for that matter—was armed.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book