22 Quotes by Edith Pearlman

Still she wondered: did the present deliver up the future, or must you chase your destiny like a harpoonist?

He gave her that last word. He gave her his love. He would think of her almost every day for the rest of his life. Only his presence would he withhold.

It was as if she had once been almost smothered and then allowed to live only if she limited her vocabulary and breathed hardly at all.

They were relieved that I was chosen by a human being,” she’d said to Angelica in her dry voice. “They were braced for an interspecies liaison.

But you said the words you knew, which were not always the ones you meant.

What a rich phrase. You could live a life on the income it yielded.

There's no rule I want to break or ever wanted to break - I find the conventional life gratifying - as long as I can sit at my typewriter, alone, for half a day.

The natural world is often bleak, but the language devoted to it is as careful as needlepoint and prophetic as well.

The ordinary experiences of aging alter and clarify your view of past, present, and future.