70 Quotes by Harold Brodkey

I don't hate you. I love you.""I love you, too. God, it's hell!"They decided to be more sensible. The next day they didn't meet in Widener. Elgin stayed in his room, and at three o'clock the phone rang. "It's me--Caroline.""Oh God, you called. I was praying you would. Where are you?""In the drugstore on the corner." There was silence. "Elgin," she said at last, "did you have any orange juice today?"He ran, down the stairs, along the sidewalk, to the drugstore to have his orange juice.

I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.

It is death that goes down to the center of the earth, the great burial church the earth is, and then to the curved ends of the universe, as light is said to do

I am sensible of the velocity of the moments, and entering that part of my head alert to the motion of the world I am aware that life was never perfect, never absolute. This bestows contentment, even a fearlessness.

I have thousands of opinions still - but that is down from millions - and, as always, I know nothing.

Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been

I was always crazy about New York, dependent on it, scared of it - well, it is dangerous - but beyond that there was the pressure of being young and of not yet having done work you really liked, trademark work, breakthrough work

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself.