115 Quotes by Alice McDermott

He could not make conversations with strangers, and yet conversations with strangers were perhaps the first thing required of him in his new life.

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.

The day and time itself: late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?

Loss is inevitable - you have to be blind or naive to think otherwise.

Much of my experience with language was formed in the church, which has an oral tradition. There are lots of repetitions in prayers and song refrains. There's a sense of incantation, that if you call not once and not twice but for a third time, the spirit appears.

No one looks at a baby and says, 'You are going to be a great novelist, and you really need to start writing now.' Something in us says: 'This is what I must do.'

Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. I've always been interested in that.

Right away I think of two books - 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Rebecca' - and of just sinking into them as a young reader. I think they must have appealed not just to my romantic adolescent soul, but I suppose there's also an appealing darkness in both of them.

I wouldn't want to tweet to anyone who would be interested in my tweets.