“The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Everyone has two memories. The one you can tell and the one that is stuck to the underside of that, the dark, tarry smear of what happened.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“She believes in will. It is so frail and delicate at night that she can’t even imagine the next morning, but it is so wide and binding by the middle of the next day that she cannot even remember the terrible night. It is as if she gives birth every day.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Surely, somewhere in the back of Bulfinch, in a part Lillian had not gotten to, there is an obscure (abstruse, arcane, shadowy, and even hidden) version of Proserpine in he Underworld in which a tired Jewish Ceres schleps through the outskirts of Tartarus, an ugly village of tired whores who must double as laundresses and barbers, a couple of saloons, a nearly empty five-and-dime, and people too poor to pull up stakes. In this version, Ceres looks all over town for her Proserpine, who crossed the River Cyane in a pretty sailboat with Pluto, having had the good sense to come to an understanding with the king early on. Pluto and Proserpine picnic in a charming park, twinkling lights overhead and handsome wide benches like the ones in Central Park. When Ceres comes, tripping a little on her hem as she walks through the soft grass, muttering and trying to yank Proserpine to her feet so they can start the long trip home to Enna and daylight (which has lost much of its luster, now that Proserpine is queen of all she surveys), the girl does not jump up at the sight of her mother, but takes her time handing out the sandwiches and pours cups of sweetened tea for the three of them. She lays a nicely ironed napkin in her lap and another in the lap of her new husband, the king. Proserpine does not eat the pomegranate seeds by mistake, or in a moment of desperate hunger, or fright, or misunderstanding. She takes the pomegranate slice out of her husband’s dark and glittering hand and pulls the seeds into her open, laughing mouth; she eats only six seeds because her mother knocks it out of her hand before she can swallow the whole sparkling red cluster.
“We have to get home,” Ceres says.
“I am home,” her daughter says.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“But in the morning everything can, and must, be seen. Daylight takes us; it peels us like fruit.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“[...] und sie hört, wie er sich in sein Doppelbett legt, auf seine Seite, da er nicht auf Helens Seite schlafen kann, wo er heimlich drei ihrer bestickten Kissen arrangiert hat und sich zum Schlafen ihnen zuwendet, ein Arm um das mittlere Kissen gelegt, den anderen unter dem Kopf, wobei seine Hand wie zum Schutz auf seiner Stirn ruht.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Eviction," Frieda said. "You can't pay, you can't stay." She said in Yiddish, "Es iz shver tzu makhen a leben." It's hard to make a living.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“...as he cannot sleep on Helen's side, which is where he has secretly arranged three of her embroidered pillows, and sleeps facing them, one arm around the middle pillow, the other curled under his head, his hand resting on his brow as if for protection.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
Amy Bloom
Born place: in The United States
Born date January 1, 1953
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“Your chances of avoiding the nursing home are directly related to the number of children you have,”
― Atul Gawande, quote from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
“Whenever I returned I found a city that was spineless, that couldn’t stand up to changes of season, heat, cold, and, especially, storms. Look how the station on Piazza Garibaldi was flooded, look how the Galleria opposite the museum had collapsed; there was a landslide, and the electricity didn’t come back on. Lodged in my memory were dark streets full of dangers, unregulated traffic, broken pavements, giant puddles. The clogged sewers splattered, dribbled over. Lavas of water and sewage and garbage and bacteria spilled into the sea from the hills that were burdened with new, fragile structures, or eroded the world from below. People died of carelessness, of corruption, of abuse, and yet, in every round of voting, gave their enthusiastic approval to the politicians who made their life unbearable.”
― quote from Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
“This whole exercise was teaching me that Russian business culture is closer to that of a prison yard than anything else. In prison, all you have is your reputation. Your position is hard-earned and it is not relinquished easily. When someone is crossing the yard coming for you, you cannot stand idly by. You have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, and if you manage to survive the attack, you’ll be deemed weak and before you know it, you will have lost your respect and become someone’s bitch. This is the calculus that every oligarch and every Russian politician goes through every day.”
― Bill Browder, quote from Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice
“It will not be easy for him to see her dead, should they become close. But she has so few friends. She cannot turn one away.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from Three Dark Crowns
“The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.”
― quote from Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE
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The Thousandth FloorBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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