“Maybe the clever people are not the ones who think they’re clever. Maybe the clever people are the ones who accept that they know nothing.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“And it can take a lifetime, a life of many years, to accept the incongruity of things: that a small moment can sit side by side with a big one, and become part of the same.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Besides, the big things in life do not present themselves as such. They come in the quiet, ordinary moments-- a phone call, a letter-- they come when we are not looking, without clues, without warning, and that is why they floor us. And it can take a lifetime, a life of many years, to accept the incongruity of things: that a small moment can sit side by side with a big one, and become part of the same.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“That's what nobody realizes. Two seconds are huge. It's the difference between something happening and something not happening. You could take one step too many and fall over the edge of a cliff. It's very dangerous.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“No one knows how to be normal, Jim. We’re all just trying our best. Sometimes we don’t have to think about it and other times it’s like running after a bus that’s already halfway down the street.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Mrs. Sussex said Byron’s loss would grow more bearable. But here was the nub: he didn’t want to lose his loss. Loss was all he had left of his mother. If time healed the gap, it would be as if she’d never been there.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“It was the same with time, he thought, and also sorrow. They were both waiting to catch you. And no matter how much you shook your arms at them and hollered, they knew they were bigger. They knew they would get you in the end.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“He doesn’t know if the words they are using actually mean the things they purport to mean or whether the words have taken on a new significance. They are talking about nothing, after all. And yet these words, these nothings, are all they have, and he wishes there were whole dictionaries of them.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Sometimes it is easier, he thinks, to live out the mistakes we have made than to summon the energy and imagination required to repair them.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Paula says that the problem is that people like Jim are too good. And he knows that the problem is not them. The problem is that people need other people (like Eileen) to be too bad.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“No one knows how to be normal ... We're all just trying our best.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“I actually hate Christmas," says Eileen. "Everybody has this idea you have to have a good time, like happiness comes in a ruddy packet." Her face is flushed with heat. "One time, I stayed in bed all day. That was one of my best Christmases.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Time was what held the world together. It kept life as it should be.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“but it is these, he realizes, these smallnesses, that make up the big things. Besides, the big things in life do not present themselves as such. They come in the quiet, ordinary moments—a phone call, a letter—they come when we are not looking, without clues, without warning, and that is why they floor us. And it can take a lifetime, a life of many years, to accept the incongruity of things: that a small moment can sit side by side with a big one, and become part of the same.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Who’s to say time is real just because we have clocks for measuring it? Who knows if everything is going forward at the same rate? Maybe everything is going backwards or sideways.
Or we could take matters into our own hands. We could move the clocks. We could make them what we want.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Maybe it was as simple as believing things were what you wanted them to be? Maybe that was all it took? If there was anything Byron had learned that summer, it was that a thing was capable of being not one but many different things, and some of them contradictory. Not everything had a label. Or if it did, you had to be prepared to re-examine that label from time to time and paste another alongside it. The truth could be true, but not in a definite way. It could be more or less true; and maybe that was the best a human being could hope for.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“The fact is that something has changed. It isn’t that he has become more likable or any less strange, but the accident has accentuated the fragility of things. If this could happen to Jim, it could happen to any one of them. Consequently the café staff have decided that Jim’s strangeness is a part of themselves, and they must protect it.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Every morning there were silver snail trails crisscrossing the hall. There were cobwebs like soft clouds and pepperings of mold at the windowsills. The moor was coming inside.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“A flock of gulls flew east, rising and falling, as if they might clean the sky with their wings.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“October passed. Leaves that his mother had once looked at loosened from the trees and twisted through the air, gathering in a slippery carpet at Byron’s feet.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Time would heal, Mrs. Sussex said. Byron’s loss would grow more bearable. But here was the crux. He didn’t want to lose his loss. Loss was all he had left of his mother. If time healed the gap, it would be as if she had never been there. One”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“(He) feels (his) words reach him. They slide beneath his orange uniform and touch his bones.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“You have to think bigger than what you know,” James”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Jim looks out the car window with his nose pressed to the glass. Sometimes he pretends to be asleep. Not because he is tired, but because he needs to be quiet.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“Time was something altogether more fragmented than it had been before. It was like throwing a handful of feathers into the air and watching them drift. Moments no longer flowed from one to the other.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“So why did you want her to go? Why did you choose to be the victim? You could have shouted at her. You could have let her know she’d hurt you. What happened, Jim? Why couldn’t you say that?”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“and he wonders if that is what people look for in a partner or a friend: the part of themselves that is missing.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“My point is, why are we slaves to something that is just a set of rules? Yes, we get up at six thirty. We get to school for nine. We eat lunch at one. But why?’
‘Because if we didn’t there would be chaos. There would be people going to work and people eating lunch and people going to bed. Nobody would have a clue what was right and what was not.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“We don’t know what to do with sadness. That’s the problem. We want to put it out of the way and we can’t.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
“There was something about her, something pure and fluid that could not be contained.”
― Rachel Joyce, quote from Perfect
Rachel Joyce
Born place: The United Kingdom
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“When you were steadily dating a boy, as she was Reeve, and this was known to everybody, it freed you up to be friends with boys.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, quote from The Voice on the Radio
“Conflict and suffering are often caused by a person not wanting to surrender his concepts and ideas of things. In the relationship between a father and a son, for example, or between partners, this happens all the time. It is important to train yourself to let go of your ideas about things. Freedom is cultivated by this practice of letting go. If you look deeply, you may find that you are holding on to a concept that is causing you to suffer a great deal. Are you intelligent enough, are you free enough, to give up this idea?”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, quote from You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment
“While I have the floor, here's a question that's been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels . . . that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing life under hereditary lords?
Why should the deposed prince or princess in every clichéd tale be chosen to lead the quest against the Dark Lord? Why not elect a new leader by merit, instead of clinging to the inbred scions of a failed royal line? Why not ask the pompous, patronizing, "good" wizard for something useful, such as flush toilets, movable type, or electricity for every home in the kingdom? Given half a chance, the sons and daughters of peasants would rather not grow up to be servants. It seems bizarre for modern folk to pine for a way of life our ancestors rightfully fought desperately to escape.”
― David Brin, quote from Glory Season
“I don't think I believe in angels, that's all. And if you were one, that would mean I'd have to re-evaluate my beliefs. I'm not quite ready to do that.”
― Karen Mahoney, quote from The Iron Witch
“I don’t think most people realize—and there’s no reason they should—the amount of demeaning garbage you have to take if you want a career in the arts. I mean, going off to med school is something you can say with your head high. Or being a banker or going into insurance or the family business—no problem. But the conversations I had with grown-ups after college… “So you’re done with school now, Bill.” “That’s right.” “So what’s next on the agenda?” Pause. Finally I would say it: “I want to be a writer.” And then they would pause. “A writer.” “I’d like to try.” Third and final pause. And then one of two inevitable replies: either “What are you going to do next?” or “What are you really going to do?” That dread double litany… What are you going to do next?… What are you really going to do?… What are you going to do next?… What are you really going to do…?”
― William Goldman, quote from Adventures in the Screen Trade
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