180 Quotes by Anthony Marra

It's stupid. There are maps to show you how to get to the place where you want to be but no maps that show you how to get to the time when you want to be.

The short story that eventually grew into Constellation was the first fiction set in Russia that I'd ever written, and that was right around the time I was giving up on a doomed, never-to-be-seen first novel. While I saw it could be something bigger, in hindsight fortuitous timing was as responsible as anything.

War is unnatural, it causes people to act unnaturally.

Sleep just a while longer, that's it, where else can you go where you neither suffer nor cause suffering.

Happiness came in moments of unpredictable loveliness.

My work often begins as little internal dares, wondering if I can pull something off. So I spent a few years drawing these stories together, trying to build a Pangea of what began as separate continents.

Work isn't meaningful just because you spend your life doing it.

She praised his book and he embraced her from gratitude rather than lust, but she didn't let go. Neither did he. She kissed his cheek, his earlobe. For months they'd run their fingers around the hem of their affection without once acknowledging the fabric. The circumference of the world tightened to what their arms encompassed. She sat on the desk, between the columns of read and unread manuscript, and pulled him toward her by his index fingers.

Invader and invaded held on to their fistfuls of earth, but in the end, the earth outlived the hands that held it.