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?

In the meantime, I hope you will not consign her to a windowless environment populated entirely by unsocialized clones who long ago abandoned the reading and discussion of literature in favor of creating ever more restrictive and meaningless ways in which humans are intended to make themselves known to one another.

Sometimes when the year grinds to its end and the new term begins I feel I’m living the life of a fruit fly – the endless ephemeral cycle, each new semester a “fresh start” that leads to the same moribund conclusions.

Thanks to Lawrence Jacobs, world’s most enthusiastic and supportive spouse, who read the first draft of this book and said, “I’m glad we have different last names.

I wish him episodes of glorious, sun-washed tedium and a loss of innocence he will contemplate for the rest of his life.

A drowning person doesn’t rescue herself.

Now in my middle fifties, an irrelevant codger, I find it discomfiting to see this generation dancing to the music of apocalypse and carrying their psychic burdens in front of them like infants in arms.

But there are other faculty here on campus who are not disposed to see notable scholarship ignored; and let it be known that, in the darkened, blood-strewn caverns of our offices, we are hewing our textbooks and keyboards into spears.

The reading and writing of fiction both requires and instills empathy – the insertion of oneself into the life of another.