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Top Alice McDermott Quotes

Browse top 12 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Alice McDermott.

Favorite Alice McDermott Quotes

1. "And when Mary nodded, Pauline said, "You'd better hurry then, you know how how is," and laughed to show she would not be married to bald John Keane for all the tea in China. In her laugh was every confidence Mary had ever shared with Pauline about her husband's failings, every unguarded criticism, every angry, impromptu, frustrated critique of his personality, his manners, his sometimes morbid, sometimes inscrutable, sometimes impatient ways. A repository, Pauline and her laugh, for every moment in thier marriage when Mary Keane had not loved her husband, when love itself had seemed a misapprehension, a delusion (a stranger standing outside of Schrafft's transformed into an answered prayer), and marriage--which Pauline had had sense enough to spurn--simply an awkward pact with a stranger, any stranger, John or George, Tom, Dick, or Harry.A repository, Pauline and her laugh, her knowing eye, for all that Mary Keane should have kept to herself." ~ Alice McDermott
2. "My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly offered love, my parents', my brother's, even Tom's, had failed to do. Love was required of me now--to be given, not merely to be sought and returned." ~ Alice McDermott
3. "I suppose I've never set out to write a novel in which nothing happens . . . only to write a novel about the lives of certain characters. That nothing 'happens' in their lives is beside the point to me; I'm still interested in how they live, and think, and speak, and make some sense of their own experience. Incident (in novels and in life) is momentary, and temporary, but the memory of an incident, the story told about it, the meaning it takes on or loses over time, is lifelong and fluid, and that's what interests me and what I hope will prove interesting to readers. We're deluged with stories of things that have happened, events, circumstances, actions, etc. We need some stories that reveal how we think and feel and hope and dream." ~ Alice McDermott
4. "It was as if he stopped time for them two weeks out of every year, cut them off from both the past and the future so that they had only this present in a brand-new place, this present in which her children sought the sight and the scent of her: a wonderful thing, when you noticed it. When the past and the future grew still enough to let you notice it. He did that for her. This man she'd married." ~ Alice McDermott
5. "She recalled how Pauline had fallen off a bus one night, late, went skidding into Creedmoor. In a novel, it would have portended the fall they were all about to take" ~ Alice McDermott
6. "The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we're gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves, and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure." ~ Alice McDermott
7. "We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!" ~ Alice McDermott
8. "We turned onto the last landing. Going out with this guy, I thought, would involve a lot of silly laughter, some wit--the buzz of his whispered wisecracks in my ear. But there would be as well his willingness to reveal, or more his inability to conceal, that he had been silently rehearsing my name as he climbed the stairs behind me. There would be his willingness to bestow upon me the power to reassure him. He would trust me with his happiness." ~ Alice McDermott
9. "The world was a cruder, more vulgar place than the one I had known. This was the language required to live in it, I supposed." ~ Alice McDermott
10. "For one of us at least, we knew, we were certain - this is how we saw the world - there would never again be loneliness in life." ~ Alice McDermott
11. "His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for them, and hopes for them. There was all he was powerless to change, including who they were--one too mild, one too easily tempted to be cruel, and the little girl (it was the weight of a heavy stone against his heart) a mystery to him, impossible to say what she, through her life, would need. And soon, one more." ~ Alice McDermott
12. "If you want to see how far we have not come from the cave and the woods, from the lonely and dangerous days of the prarie or the plain, witness the reaction of a modern suburban family, nearly ready for bed, when the doorbell rings or the door is rattled. They will stop where they stand, or sit bolt upright in their beds, as if a streak of pure lightning has passed through the house. Eyes wide, voices fearful, they will whisper to each other, "There's someone at the door," in a way that might make you believe they have always feared and anticipated this moment - that they have spent their lives being stalked." ~ Alice McDermott

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Today's Quote

I learned not to confuse 'busy' with 'productive,' but I'm still far too addicted to email to resist its early-morning digital snuggles."
Author: Chris Hardwick

What Did Alice McDermott Talk About?

Hey
Wit
Per
Thin
Hen
Con
Ear
She
Moment
Here
Ought
Act
Off
Lit
Tan
Lives
Suppose
Line
Child
Ways

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