132 Quotes by Elizabeth McCracken

There was a time in my life when I wasn't sure I'd ever write a short story again because I had started writing novels, and I am fundamentally a lazy person, and the fact is that a novel is a lazy person's form, really. That is, you can amble; you can digress.

There were a lot of things I loved about working in a library, but mostly I miss the library patrons. I love books, but books are everywhere. Library patrons are as various and oddball and democratic as library books.

The walls of the Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary were ruined stucco chipping away from the brick underneath, with ghostly frescoes, concrete-filled niches, and one complete, vivid crucifix painted over the altar.

In library science school, back in the years of glowing green non-graphical screens and protocols called Archie and Veronica, I wrote Internet documentation.

In the last century, I earned my living as a librarian, and I loved it. I'd have to take some classes to get up to speed with 21st-century librarianship.

It’s a happy life, but someone is missing. It’s a happy life, and someone is missing.

In front is a sign that says: An exact replica of a figment of my imagination, and that is what this life feels like some days. It’s a happy life, but someone is missing. It’s a happy life, and someone is missing. It’s a happy life-.

Unrequited love–plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing–turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn’t want, couldn’t use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness.

You can’t out-travel sadness. I travel not to get away from my troubles but to see how they look in front of famous buildings.