“We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“Their silence comfortable. Something unfolding. But what? Not love, which wrenched and wounded. Not love, which came only once.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“One of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“It's easier to die if others around you are dying.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“What we fear we often rage against.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he
had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“By January it had always been winter.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“You’ve got a chance to start out all over again. A new place, new people, new sights. A clean slate. See, you can be anything you want with a fresh start.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“Where are the reporters of yesteryear?' he muttered, 'the nail biting, acerbic, alcoholic nighthawk bastards who truly knew how to write?”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“Home after midnight from a debate on the wording of a minor municipal bylaw on bottle recycling, he felt like he was a pin in the hinge of power.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“For Archie was an expert in dividing the affairs of life into men's business and women's business. An empty cupboard and a full plate were the man's business, a full cupboard and an empty plate the concern of the woman.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“On the stairs an image came to him. Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought calm and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“The only cities were of ice, bergs with cores of beryl, blue gems within white gems, that some said gave off an odor of almonds.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“The house was heavy around him, the pressure of the past filling the rooms like odorless gas.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“No, they didn’t have any money, the sea was dangerous and men were lost, but it was a satisfying life in a way people today do not understand. There was a joinery of lives all worked together, smooth in places, or lumpy, but joined. The work and the living you did was the same things, not separated out like today.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“If a piece ofknotted string can unleash the wind and if a drowned man can awaken... then I believe a broken man can heal.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“Three or four days later he was still thinking about seal flipper pie. Remembered the two raw eggs Petal gave him. That he invested with pathetic meaning.
'Petal,' said Quoyle to Wavey, 'hated to cook. Hardly ever did.' Thought of the times he had fixed dinner for her, set put his stupid candles, folded the napkins as though they were important, waited and finally ate alone, the radio on for company. And later dined with the children, shoveling in canned spaghetti, scraping baby food off small chins.
'Once she gave me two eggs. Raw eggs for a present.' He had made an omelet of them, hand-fed her as thought she were a nestling bird. And saved the shells in a paper cup on top of the kitchen cabinet. Where they still must be. ”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“They say that doing ten sums a day prevents you from becoming senile. But by that argument bankers should be geniuses. That's not right. Thickest heads in the world.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“What did it mean, what your father said about the tall, quiet woman.
Ar, that? Let's see. Used to say there was four women in every man's heart. The Maid in the Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“Billy stretched and yawned, his withered neck taut again for a few seconds. "I can feel the season changing," he said. "Drawing in. This weather change coming means the end of hot weather. Time I got out to Gaze Island and worked on me poor old father's grave. Put it off last year and the year before." Some sadness straining the words. Billy seemed stored in an envelope; the flap sometimes lifted, his flattened self sliding onto the table.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“You know, the Chinese have forgotten more about sailing than the rest of the world ever knew.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
“La marée baissait encore dans l'étrange mouvement du flux et reflux de l'eau, comme si un coeur immense au centre de la terre ne battait que deux fois par jour.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from The Shipping News
Annie Proulx
Born place: in Norwich, Connecticut, The United States
Born date August 22, 1935
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“Jacob Kowalski: I'm sure people like you,too.
Newt Scamander: No, not really. I'm annoying.”
― Newt Scamander, quote from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
“But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Guards! Guards!
“I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. …
My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds...
I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought.
I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!”
I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!”
It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream.
…
It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air.
We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come.
Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us.
It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from The Great Book of Amber
“ Huging my pillow to my chest, I told myself, At least soon you won't have so much time to miss him. Soon school will start again, and then you'll be busier.
Wait. Am I reduced to HOPING for school to start?
Somehow, I have discovered a whole new level of pathetic.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from Stargazer
“How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”
― W.B. Yeats, quote from The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
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