Quotes from book

Bag of Bones

“I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.”

“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”

“Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug.”

“For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand.”

“I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness.”

“So what, ghosts can't hurt you. That's what I thought then.”

“I was being paid to do what I loved, and there's no gig on earth better than that; it's like a license to steal.”

“Her body was wrapped in shadows like moth wings, like rose-petals.”

“A person can go along quite awhile if they get a good day every once and again.”

“I think reality is thin, you know, thin as lake ice after a thaw, and we fill our lives with noise and light and motion to hide that thinness from ourselves.”

“This is how we go on: one day a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root canal at a time; boat builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.”