After all: I had been practicing lifting up Owen Meany—forever. The
A man you like, you mean, Tabitha? my grandmother asked. I wouldn’t mention him if I didn’t like him, my mother said. I want you to meet him, she said to us all. You’ve dated him? my grandmother asked...
A man named Hero washed the press cloths; Meany Hyde told Homer that the man had been a kind of hero, once. ‘That’s all I heard. He’s been comin’ here for years, but he was a hero. Just once,’ Meany a...
A book feels true when it feels true, she said to him, impatiently. A book's true when you can say, 'Yeah! That's just how damn people behave all the time.
Worst of all were the highly unlikely science-fiction novels, or the equally implausible futuristic tales.Couldn't my mom and Nana Victoria see for themselves that I was both mystified and frightened...
The demands of writing and of real life are not always similar.
The surprised bookseller, whose name (inexplicably) was Mendelssohn. He was no relation to the German composer, and this Mendelssohn either overliked his last name or disliked his first so much that h...
. .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .
You shouldn’t guess about someone’s past; if you don’t see any evidence of it, a person’s past remains unknown to you.)
Owen speaks in all caps throughout the story) SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY - NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT...
As a novelist, he was always looking ahead, too.)
So my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail dresses she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. even in her...
It struck him as a brilliant accusation to make of anyone who was slightly (or hugely) different. It was the best rumor to start about anyone because it could never be proved or disproved.
Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think yo...
You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.
You know, it's not only writers who have this problem, but writers really, have this problem; for us, a so-called train of thought, though unspoken, is unstoppable.
You don't sound very well Owen. I pointed out to him. IF JESUS HAD TO BE BORN ON A DAY LIKE THIS. I DON'T THINK HE'D HAVE LASTED LONG ENOUGH TO BE CRUCIFIED. Owen said.
YOU LET ME DROWN! Owen said. YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD! he told us. REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.
Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me. —FREDERICK BUECHN...
When, if only for a moment, the novelist steps out of the creator's role, what roles are there for the novelist to step into? There are only creators of stories and characters in stories; there are no...