29 Quotes by Julie Schumacher

Talking to a therapist, I thought, was like taking your clothes off and then taking your skin off, and then having the other person say, "Would you mind opening up your rib cage so that we can start?

Depression is an illness, and no fault of the person who suffers from it

Maybe the things she loved most weren't meant to be permanent. Maybe the fact that they existed was enough.

Young would-be novelists and poets believe that art is eternal. Au contraire: we are in the business of ephemera, the era of floating islands of trash, and most of the things we feel deeply and inscribe on the page will disappear.

She drained the pasta and looked out the window over the sink. In the middle of the street, paying no attention whatsoever to oncoming cars, two little boys were jousting with hockey sticks while riding bicycles, their mother observing through a fog of cigarette smoke and a beer. Human beings, Janet thought, were a disappointment.

Where to start, Fitger thought. The department was a funhouse of dysfunctional characters. Academia was, traditionally, a refuge for the poorly socialized and the obsessive; but English, at Payne, had a higher percentage of crackpots than most.

Fitger behaves like more of an ass than he actually is.

...the literature student has learned to inquire, to question, to interpret, to critique, to compare, to research, to argue, to sift, to analyze, to shape, to express. His intellect can be put to broad use. The computer major, by contrast, is a technician - a plumber clutching a single, albeit shining, box of tools.

Still, all was quiet downstairs…and now the concept of leaving his bed had sent an urgent body-gram to his bladder, which over the years had become a thimble-sized organ with an impetuous streak.