Wally Lamb Quotes

“I thought about how love was always the thing that did that - smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt.”

“Who gets the change?" the clerk asked. "You or… your fella?"
Oh, he's not my boyfriend," I said. "He's my mother.”

“With destruction comes renovation.”

“Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.”

“I cried because I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.”

“If you risked love, it took you wherever you wanted to go. If you repressed it, you ended up unhappy.”

“Love is like breathing. You take it in and let it out.”

“Love grows from the rich foam of forgiveness, mongrels make good dogs, and the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.”

“Life seemed nearest to acceptable at four A. M.”

“It is all connected Dominick," she said. "Life is not a series of isolated ponds & puddles; life is this river you see below, before you. It flows from the past through the present on it's way to the future.”

“I think… the secret is to just settle for the shape of your life takes… Instead of you know, always waiting and wishing for whatmake you happy.”

“Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That’s what life’s all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.”

“Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.”

“If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and do something about them.”

“It was a matter of perspective, I began to see.
The whole world was crazy; I'd flattered myself by assuming I was a semifinalist."
-- Dolores Price”

“The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.”

“This was what could happen to you: you could end up this far from where you thought you were going.”

“I walked over and looked closer at the statue of the goddess. She was wearing a headdress with a skull and a cobra and a crescent moon. Maybe this is what peace of mind was all about: having a poisonous snake on your head and smiling anyway.”

“Religion's just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all.”

“He's splitting me open, I thought. He'll break me and then I'll die.”

“A woman who surrenders her freedom need not surrender her dignity.”

“All the dead bolts, pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.”

“We are like water, aren’t we? We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. But strong and destructive, too.” And something else, I think to myself. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance.”

“that's the funny thing about mazes: what's baffling on the ground begins to makes sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself". (p. 717)”

“that books were mirrors, reflective in sometimes unpredictable ways.”

“The greatest griefs are silent.”

“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.”

“I needed her to stop. Needed not to hear the pain in her voice--to see the way she was twisting the pocketbook strap. If she kept talking, she might break down and tell me everything.”

“If no one is home, then someone is missing. So you grieve.”

“That's the trouble with survival of the fittest, isn't it, Dominick? The corpse at your feet. That little inconvenience.”

“Take what people give you. Drink their milkshakes.”

“But I think this: that whatever prices I've paid, whatever sorrows I shoulder, well, I have blessings, too. Not just my family now, but the others-the ones who have died… They're with me still. They're here…”

“High School is like a sickness, but trust me, soon the fever breaks and you get over it." ~She's Come Undone”

“If I could just write it down in a piece of paper, then maybe she could get a decent night's sleep, eat a little of her dinner. Maybe she could have a minute's worth of peace.”