Steven Millhauser · 305 pages
Rating: (784 votes)
“For what is genius, I ask you, but the capacity to be obsessed? ...We have all been geniuses, you and I; but sooner or later it is beaten out of us, the glory faded, and by the age of seven most of us are nothing but wretched little adults.”
― Steven Millhauser, quote from Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright
“Perhaps sound is only an insanity of silence, a mad gibber of empty space grown fearful of listening to itself and hearing nothing.”
― Steven Millhauser, quote from Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright
“... now and again we would happen to step out of the familiar universe into a sudden sharp shock of sweetly scented air, sudden as spilled perfume, piercing as crystal, dark and sweet as the sound of oboes.”
― Steven Millhauser, quote from Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright
“... it is the purpose of this history to trace not the mere outlines of a life but the inner plan, not the external markings but the secret soul.”
― Steven Millhauser, quote from Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright
“Why do I need TV when I have forty-eight apartment windows to watch across the vacant lot, and a sliver of Lake Erie? I've seen history out this window. So much. I was four when we moved here in 1919. The fruit-sellers' carts and coal wagons were pulled down the street by horses back then. I used to stand just here and watch the coal brought up by the handsome lad from Groza, the village my parents were born in. Gibb Street was mainly Rumanians back then. It was "Adio" - "Good-bye"- in all the shops when you left. Then the Rumanians started leaving. They weren't the first, or the last. This has always been a working-class neighborhood. It's like a cheap hotel - you stay until you've got enough money to leave.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“When I tell you you’ll fart and pee in your pants with terror.”
― Shi Nai'an, quote from Outlaws of the Marsh
“The hours are slow in passing as they always are when you are waiting in fear for you know not what: I am reminded of the moments before the coming of a cyclone, when you have barricaded yourself into your dwelling and have nothing else to do but wait. The moments will not pass, the air hangs still and heavy; it is as though time itself has been slowed by the friction of fear.”
― Amitav Ghosh, quote from The Hungry Tide
“Okay," I said hoarsely as the blood left my head and headed south for the winter.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“Do you remember when time was working against us? When you said that our time together was limited? I needed you so desperately then. You protected me and gave me reason to hope, showed me that I was still human. I hated myself for giving you that dominance but at the end of the day, I know that it was what I needed... I needed to fall for you in order to save myself.”
― quote from Screaming in the Silence
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