“ The values and assumptions of that household I took in without knowing when or how it happened, and I have them to this day: The pleasure in sharing pleasure. The belief that is is only proper to help… William Maxwell
“ You cannot go to the cemetery and ask to be enlightened on matters of this kind, though it would ease my mind considerably if you could. William Maxwell
“ If the Lowland farmer spoke with an uncouth accent, dressed in rags, lived in a miserable hovel, and fed on the same grain he fed his animals, it was not because he was a savage but because the relent… William Maxwell
“ What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory - meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion - is really a form of storyte… William Maxwell
“ It would have been a help if at some time Baptist preacher, resting his forearms on the pulpit and hunching his shoulders, had said On the other hand, how could any preacher, Baptist or otherwise, sa… William Maxwell
“ At that period, rising in the world meant giving up working with your hands in favor of work in a store or an office. The people who lived in town had made it, and turned their backs socially on those… William Maxwell
“ The music of Beethoven's Fidelio always rises up in my mind when I think of that meeting in the forest, and my throat constricts with an emotion that is, I'm afraid, purely factitious--unless feelings… William Maxwell
“ People often ask themselves the right questions. Where they fail is in answering the questions they ask themselves, and even there they do not fail by much. A single avenue of reasoning followed to it… William Maxwell
“ The world (including Drapervilleh is not a nice place, and the innocent and the young have to take their chances. They cannot be watched over, twenty-four hours of the day. At what moment, from what h… William Maxwell
“ My father represented authority, which meant—to me—that he could not also represent understanding. William Maxwell
“ With no sense of the passing of time, they held each other and lost themselves in the opening, unmasking tenderness that always comes after a satisfactory quarrel. William Maxwell
“ They looked at me, and were so full of delight in the pleasure they were giving me that some final thread of resistance gave way and I understood not only how entirely generous they were but also that… William Maxwell
“ They had stopped shouting at each other and put their faith in legal counsel. With the result that how things could be made to look was what counted, not how they actually were. William Maxwell
“ Without the heavy set aristocratic man snoring away on his side of the bed, without the fresh-eyed child whose hair ribbon needs retying; without the conversation at meals and the hearty appetites and… William Maxwell
“ Sometimes she goes out to work as a practical nurse, and comes home and sits by the kitchen table soaking her feet in a pan of hot water and Epsom salts. When she gets into bed and the springs creak u… William Maxwell
“ For most people, having company for more than three of four days is a serious mistake, the equivalent to sawing a large hole in the roof and leaving all the doors and windows open in the middle of win… William Maxwell
