278 Quotes by Wallace Stegner

What the disorderly crave above everything is order, what the dislocated aspire to is location.

You are at once a lasting presence and an unhealed wound.

It reminds me too much of how little life changes: how, without dramatic events or high resolves, without tragedy, without even pathos, a reasonably endowed, reasonable well-intentioned man can walk through the world’s great kitchen from end to end and arrive at the back door hungry.

We’re all tougher than we think we are. We’re fixed so that almost anything heals.

You can’t be close to the mortality of friends without being brought to think of your own.

Values, both those that we approve and those that we don’t, have roots as deep as creosote rings, and live as long and grow as slowly.

Stegner shows us, again and again, that it is love and friendship, the sanctity and celebration of our relationships, that not only support a good life, but create one.

I didn’t know myself well, and still don’t. But I did know, and know now, the few people I loved and trusted. My feeling for them is one part of me I have never quarreled with, even though my relations with them have more than once been abrasive.

I am impressed by how much of my grandparent’s life depended on continuities, contacts, connections, friendships, and blood relationships.