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4b04e2e
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The truth is life is full of joy and full of great sorrow, but you can't have one without the other.
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Andre Dubus III |
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80e4fc2
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it's almost easier being down and alone than when you re up and no one s there to share the view with you
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Andre Dubus III |
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ef47fd0
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Dat's what they say of this cauntry back home, Kath: 'America, the land of milk and honey.' Bot they never tell you the milk's gone sour and the honey's stolen.
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american-dream
immigration
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Andre Dubus III |
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aad09d3
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A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth.
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reading
truth
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Andre Dubus |
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e4b0681
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And I felt more like me than I ever had, as if the years I'd lived so far had formed layers of skin and muscle over myself that others saw as me when the real one had been underneath all along, and I knew writing- even writing badly- had peeled away those layers, and I knew then that if I wanted to stay awake and alive, if I wanted to stay me, I would have to keep writing.
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Andre Dubus III |
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422f761
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What cracks had he left in their hearts? Did they love less now and settle for less in return, as they held onto parts of themselves they did not want to give and lose again? Or - and he wished this - did they love more fully because they had survived pain, so no longer feared it?
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pain
hope
love
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Andre Dubus |
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f178c12
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For our excess we lost everything.
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Andre Dubus III |
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53675b8
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What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?
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passion
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Andre Dubus |
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6e734dc
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So many of us fail: we divorce our wives and husbands, we leave the roofs of our lovers, go once again into the lonely march, mustering our courage with work, friends, half pleasures which are not whole because they are not shared. Yet still I believe in love's possibility, in its presence on the earth; as I believe I can approach the altar on any morning of any day which may be the last and receive the touch that does not, for me, say: The..
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Andre Dubus |
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29c1da6
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The ocean to my right was maroon, the sky above it silver. There were sand trails through the thick purple ice plant that grew along the roadside... but now the sky is the color of peaches... It was a ball of bright saffron sinking into the sea, turning the water purple, the sky orange and green.
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Andre Dubus III |
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109390b
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He learned how quickly love died when you weren't looking; if you weren't looking.
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Andre Dubus |
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cc52fcd
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We receive and we lose, and we must try to achieve gratitude; and with that gratitude to embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses.
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Andre Dubus |
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fdae5ee
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Sometimes in this life, only one or two opportunities are put before us and we must seize them no matter the risk.
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opportunity
motivational
life
inspirational
lessons-in-life
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Andre Dubus III |
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433cfa5
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There's something about taking the cart back instead of leaving it in the parking lot...It's significant...Because somebody has to take them in...And if you know that, and you do it for that one guy, you do something else. You join the world...You move out of your isolation and become universal.
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Andre Dubus |
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209634b
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we don't have to live great lives, we just have to understand and survive the ones we've got.
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Andre Dubus |
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a530a7c
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The office was large, with many women and men at desks, and she learned their names, and presented to them an amiability she assumed upon entering the building. Often she felt that her smiles, and her feigned interest in people's anecdotes about commuting and complaints about colds, were an implicit and draining part of her job. A decade later she would know that spending time with people and being unable either to speak from her heart or t..
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Andre Dubus |
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a7911bb
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Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you'll see in your arms is yourself.
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Andre Dubus |
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a59922a
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If there is no snake at your feet, do not lift rocks at the side of the road.
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Andre Dubus III |
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0a586af
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joy was something she willed herself to show us, something she raised from deep inside herself as a promise for what could be. Now her life seemed to have opened up into it as if it had been waiting for her. (215)
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Andre Dubus III |
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b908d56
|
Its sound in her soul was a distant fast train. Love did not bring happiness, it did not last, and it ended in pain. She did not want to believe this, and she was not certain that she did; perhaps she feared it was true in her own life, and her fear had become a feeling that tasted like disbelief.
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Andre Dubus |
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0380aec
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And that's what I wanted: obliteration. Decimation. Just an instant smear of me right out of all this rising and falling and nothing changing that feels like living.
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Andre Dubus III |
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240e7be
|
Wanting to know absolutely what a story is about, and to be able to say it in a few sentences, is dangerous: it can lead us to wanting to possess a story as we possess a cup... A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth.
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Andre Dubus |
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22c2a87
|
There were three of these women, separated by short intervals of pain, remorse, and despair. When he and the last one had their final quarrel - she threw the breadboard - he was nearly fifty-five, and he gave up on love, save the memory of it. Always his aim had been marriage. He had never entered what he considered to be an affair, something whose end was an understood condition of its beginning. But he had loved and wanted for the rest of..
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Andre Dubus |
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d0bc675
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Regret was Fear's big sister,
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Andre Dubus III |
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f2a4987
|
When Jennifer was here in the summer, they were at the house most days. I would say generally that as they got older they became quieter, and though I enjoyed both, I sometimes missed the giggles and shouts. The quiet voices, just low enough for me not to hear from wherever I was, rising and failing in proportion to my distance from them, frightened me. Not that I believed they were planning or recounting anything really wicked, but there w..
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Andre Dubus |
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d2e5f6d
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this I know of life's difficult times: there is always a time for them to begin and a time for them to end, and the man who knows this knows he must thank God for each day he has suffered because that is always one day closer to the sun, the real sun.
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Andre Dubus III |
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03ad2e9
|
It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment. What creates despair is the imagination, which pretends there is a future, and insists on predicting millions of moments, thousands of days, and so drains you that you cannot live the moment at hand. ("A Father's Story")"
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imagination
moment
despair
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Andre Dubus |
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bfa5cf9
|
it seemed almost inconceivable that in his short marriage to Althea she had, in her quiet way, left him feeling not only worthy, but exceptional, a man not only capable of being a real poet, but a husband and father too.
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Andre Dubus III |
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0bd0286
|
Somehow she was becoming the kind of woman she didn't like, somebody who felt one way but smiled it off in a mask of cheerfulness, the kind of woman who got very good at small talk.
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Andre Dubus III |
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59ceb12
|
But beneath them all, at the very bottom of the stack, is a worn and slightly tattered magazine called African Mamas Sucking Hog. I flip through it real quick; a bunch of young black girls dressed like Kenyans giving fat-ass bikers blow jobs. I smile at this; Elroy the scholar. Elroy the sicko masturbator.
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Andre Dubus III |
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06a9392
|
If my father had been working at the 7-Eleven in Wyoming last night, what would he have done? Would he have gone for Elroy's vital-organ zones? Or would he have aimed for his elbows, knees, and shoulders?
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Andre Dubus III |
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29b913e
|
He thought of winter coming, how it's the only season that stays like it will never leave;
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Andre Dubus III |
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d9ef9c9
|
The JD wasn't going down smooth at all. Not like good stuff should. Instead of a warm slow seeping, it seemed to be kicking its way down his throat. And the buzz felt wrong; it was coming too fast, after only a few shots, and it wasn't rounding out any of the sharp edges. It was somehow leaving everything ragged.
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Andre Dubus III |
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f02d5c7
|
But now his body feels like some dumb beast he merely exists inside, and every now and then it lets him know it needs to do something: To eat. To piss or shit. To move or just lie down and rest.
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Andre Dubus III |
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f27f86a
|
Her thighs are oiled and dark, and oblivion never felt as good as it does now,
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Andre Dubus III |
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45a2163
|
She tried to stand but he had her by the hair and with his other hand he was jerking back and forth on himself, and she couldn't breathe and then he let out a groan as warm spurts fell wetly across her cheek and nose and eye, and Davey was laughing as if he'd just scored points in a game, and Luke let go of her hair and she fell back on her hands.
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Andre Dubus III |
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ef6d435
|
I blinked and looked around my tiny rented kitchen, saw things I'd never seen before: the stove leaning to the left, the handle of the fridge covered with dirty masking tape, the chipped paint of the window casing, a missing square of linoleum on the floor under the radiator. I stood and closed the notebook. I picked up the pencil and set it on top like some kind of marker, a reminder to me of something important I shouldn't lose.
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Andre Dubus III |
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f432505
|
But when he sat on the bed beside me, then leaned over and kissed my forehead, my cheek, my lips, his hand pressed to my rib cage, the other stroking my hair back, it was like I was an empty well and didn't know it until just now when he uncovered me and it started to rain.
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self-awareness
love
knowing
self-realization
|
Andre Dubus III |
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d476006
|
On the hottest days you could smell the wood from the lumberyard on the other side of Water Street, the piss and shit of the drunks in the weeds, the engine exhaust, the sweet lead of the paint flaking off our clapboards.
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Andre Dubus III |
|
ffc5abb
|
I felt more like me than I ever had, as if the years I'd lived so far had formed layers of skin and muscle over myself that others saw as me when the real one had been underneath all along, and writing--even writing badly--had peeled away those layers, and I knew then that if I wanted to stay this awake and alive, if I wanted to stay me, I would have to keep writing.
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|
Andre Dubus III |
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f308654
|
I feel so much I hardly feel anything at all.
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Andre Dubus III |
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42f7d77
|
What did he think? That time moved forward? No, for the good times it slipped out of your hands like water, but when things went wrong time stopped. It stopped and stared at you and never took its eyes away from what you'd done. I hope they hurt you in there. If you come looking for Susan, you will be sorry.
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Andre Dubus III |
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b878a9c
|
For there is so much she needs to pass on to this child, that our lives are brief, even long ones like hers, and the one thing we should do is take care of each other. That's all. But honey, it's so hard. Why, child, is it so hard? A voice through the trees.
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Andre Dubus III |