“It happens the world over - we love ourselves more than we do the one we say we love. We all want to be Number One, we've got to be Number One or nothing! We can't see that we could make ourselves loved and needed in the Number Two, or Three, or Four spot. No sir, we've got to be Number One, and if we can't make it, we'll rip and tear at the loved one till we've ruined every smidgin of love that was ever there.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“...I wondered why so much had been written about love's pain and so little about the glorious relief of being delivered from love's pain.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“I had sparkle that morning, sparkle that originated somewhere deep inside me and spread outward to my cheeks and eyes, even it seemed, to the gleam of my hair.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“I was especially perceptive to all things beautiful that morning—raspberries in blue china bowls were enough to make the heart sing.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“Dear Julie:
If I didn't feel that there is some good in your story, I wouldn't take the time to write a criticism of it. But there is some good in it, some points that make me feel that if you expend the effort(Look who's talking about expending the effort, I couldn't help thinking) you may well achieve your very worthy ambition.
First of all, you have an ear for cadence. Your sentences flow rather smoothly, and the continuity of your paragraphs is quite good.
Secondly, your imagery is sharp and clear-cut. I could smell that dank, rat-infested attic and I was more than a little in love with your pretty heroine by the time she emerged from her third paragraph. Furthermore, you occasionally achieve poetic effects which are pleasing.
But, my darling niece, your villains have nothing but venom in their souls, and your sympathetic characters are ready to step right off into Paradise without one spot to tarnish their purity. People aren't like that, Julie. Take a look around you.
Again, all your colors, your moods, your nusances, are essentially feminine, and it just doesn't ring true to be told that a man is responsible for them. No, Julie, it will be a long time before you speak and think and feel like an anguished old German musician of eighty! And, after all, what do you know about the problems of musical composition, or the life of an impoverised German laborer such as the landlord in his nineteenth-century environment? And how much do you know about sadism and brutality?
I must talk to you about any number of points. When you get home from school tomorrow, I shall have some recommendations to make; also some assignments. I am quite excited. It well may be that I have the making of a future writer in my hands.
Uncle Haskell”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“And then suddenly Danny's arms were around me, and his lips were on mine, and the crazy windshield wipers commenced singing our names together.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“I found lines that mirrored an ache and longing I had so often felt when the beauty around my woods cathedral was too intense, when the need to grasp and keep loveliness left me with a sense of desolate frustration.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“One never stops climbing, Julie, unless he wants to stop and vegetate. There’s always something just ahead.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“That was the way it was that beautiful evening of cold November rain and muddy country roads and crazy windshield wipers. That was the moment of my greatest security and confidence; it was the time when I realized that love makes one a better person, a kinder gentler one.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“From my window I watched the full moon—a moon that reminded me of Brett—become shadowed, little by little until there was only a deep blackness in the woods at night. I would sit there wakeful, hour after hour, and wonder if this aching around my heart, this sense of being alone, forlorn and unwanted in a world where there was gayety and love for others of my age, was going to continue for all of my days.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“We had good long talks about my writing in the days that followed. "Write of things you know, Julie; familiar, simple things that you have experienced; things that have touched you deeply."
"But nothing's ever happened to me. I've just lived here with Aunt Cordelia and you most of my life, I've gone to school, visited Father--oh, sure, I'm in love with Danny, but that's something we've grown into--very wonderful for us, but not very exciting for the rest of the world. How can a person who has lived as quiet a life as I have find anything to write about?"
"Then you do have a problem. If you haven't lived long enough to have felt anything deeply, than you are in the same position I--as many would-be writers are. You've nothing to say. So take up crocheting.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“On such a night,’ I thought, ‘were ill and good,
Bright and unlovely; precious, tawdry,
All mingled into one
And pressed against my heart.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“Accept the fact that this is a man’s world and learn how to play the game gracefully, my sweet.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“Once again, both Chris and I were manipulated like small puppets in our world of adults. We didn’t like it, and we suffered, but the tall ones around us said that we would soon get over our sadness, that we would “adapt” in a matter of weeks.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“that old Mrs. Bishop was lacking in the qualities that make a good mother. And saying it that way makes her sound a good deal better than she really was.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
“I had lived with Aunt Cordelia too long to enjoy being called “Julie, baby” or “Honeybun” or “Sugar.” They were foolish in the first place and rather revoltingly sticky for someone who was strictly a high protein girl.”
― Irene Hunt, quote from Up a Road Slowly
Irene Hunt
Born place: in The United States
Born date May 18, 1907
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“She [Lady Budd] was dressed in a manner to be described as impregnable, like a long, neat, up-to-date battle-cruiser.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement
“The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that seeing nothing it might avoid Truth. It said to itself: 'If seeing's believing, then I don't want to see -- if silence is golden, it is also, in this case, very expedient.”
― Radclyffe Hall, quote from The Well of Loneliness
“We make deals with the devil every day, metaphorically.”
― Daniel Waters, quote from Generation Dead
“I don't like anybody or anything," said Lucinda.
Yes, you do;--you like horses to ride, and dresses to wear.”
― Anthony Trollope, quote from The Eustace Diamonds
“Neither of them knew what it was to be family, to have family, to make a family. They knew cruelty, abuse, abandonment. She wondered if that was why they had come together. They both understood what it was to have nothing, to know fear and hunger and despair- and both had remade themselves.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Immortal in Death
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