"When he turned and walked into the living room he knew instantly why it was that he hadn’t wanted to come here, and that he ought to get out as soon as he possibly could. There, staring him in the fac..."
- William Maxwell
"They had stopped shouting at each other and put their faith in legal counsel. With the result that how things could be made to look was what counted, not how they actually were."
"The world (including Drapervilleh is not a nice place, and the innocent and the young have to take their chances. They cannot be watched over, twenty-four hours of the day. At what moment, from what h..."
"His sadness was of the kind that is patient and without hope."
"It seemed like a mistake. And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn't be. Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn't be crossed. I had to find ..."
"If you turn the imagination loose like a hunting dog, it will often return with the bird in its mouth.'(from "The Front and the Back Parts of the House", 1991)"
"They looked at me, and were so full of delight in the pleasure they were giving me that some final thread of resistance gave way and I understood not only how entirely generous they were but also that..."
"What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytell..."
"It is impossible to say why people put so little value on complete happiness."
"There is nothing so difficult to arrive at as the nature and personality of one's parents. Death, about which so much mystery is made,is perhaps no mystery at all. But the history of one's parents has..."