|
456525d
|
The pain has left but I know that it has not gone far, that it is sulking somewhere in a corner or under the bed and it will jump out when I least expect it.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
7c0a3a6
|
Everything seems simple until you think about it.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
d90cb2f
|
What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
8f0a86e
|
There's always world enough and time.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
4137e12
|
The hardest lesson is Clare's solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I've interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare's face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I've discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieve..
|
|
marriage
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
3f407ad
|
After my mom died she ate my father up completely. She would have hated it. Every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird. If I had to live on without you I know I could not do it. But I hope, I have this vision of yo..
|
|
life
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
a016944
|
she smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
93d37a6
|
We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like being separated.
|
|
separation
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
49248b9
|
Of course.. some people, me included, believe that punk is just the most recent manifestation of this, this spirit, this feeling, you know, that things aren't right and that in fact things are so wrong that the only thing we can do is to say Fuck It, over and over again, really loud, until someone stops us.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
acdcdc2
|
Why do you have a cigarette lighter in your glove compartment?" her husband, Jack, asked her. "I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson"
|
|
knitting
smoking
sarcasm
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
bdb5b63
|
But now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.
|
|
present
life
dark-bird
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
1b58fc4
|
Home sweet home. No place like home. Take me home, country roads. Home is where the heart is. But my heart is here. So I must be home. Clare sighs, turns her head, and is quiet. Hi, honey. I'm home. I'm home.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
51015ee
|
I sometimes end up in dangerous situations, and I come back to you broken and messed up, and you worry about me when I'm gone. It's like marrying a policeman.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
4d992c1
|
When I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.
|
|
missing-someone
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
5031143
|
The space that I can call mine.. is so small that my ideas have become small. I am like a caterpillar in a cocoon of paper; all around me are sketches for sculptures, small drawings that seem like moths fluttering against the windows, beating their wings to escape from this tiny space.. Every day the ideas come more reluctantly, as though they know I will starve them and stunt their growth.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
a3f5e17
|
Outside it's a perfect spring night. We stand on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building, and Henry takes my hand, and I look at him, and I raise our joined hands and Henry twirls me around and soon we're dancing down Belle Plaine Avenue, no music but the sound of cars whoosing by and our own laughter, and the smell of cherry blossoms that fall like snow on the sidewalk as we dance underneath the tress.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
7f73e9c
|
How does it feel? I feels exactly like one of those dreams in which you suddenly realize that you have to take a test you haven't studied for and you aren't wearing any clothes. And you've left your wallet at home. When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest ..
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
4cbb15f
|
Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust.
|
|
trust
life
love
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
224448c
|
Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments line up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
059a179
|
one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.
|
|
loss
happiness
love
time-traveling
childhood-memory
mother
memory
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
73d590b
|
Mama said, "Dreams are different to real life but important too."
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
5916a4d
|
I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.
|
|
loss
happiness
love
mother
memory
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
dc5f420
|
Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning.
|
|
freedom
meaning
life
truth
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
cc159ae
|
My head is throbbing. I need coffee. Leaving the marbled papers in a state of controlled chaos, I walk through the office and past the page's desk in the Reading Room. I am halted by Isabelle's voice saying, "Perhaps Mr. DeTamble can help you," by which she means "Henry, you weasel, where are you slinking off to?" and this astoundingly beautiful amber-haired tall slim girl turns around and looks at me as through I am her personal Jesus. My ..
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
66947ab
|
Henry loves my hair almost as though it is a creature unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love him back.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
94d5168
|
When I began writing The Night Bookmobile, it was a story about a woman's secret life as a reader. As I worked it also became a story about the claims that books place on their readers, the imbalance between our inner and outer lives, a cautionary tale of the seductions of the written word. It became a vision of the afterlife as a library, of heaven as a funky old camper filled with everything you've ever read. What is this heaven? What is ..
|
|
reading-books
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
40d90fb
|
absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
696b456
|
Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude.
|
|
mourning
longing
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
8f9d055
|
What we need,' Henry says, 'is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let's call her Tabula Rasa.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
6623759
|
When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise. Clare has turned the second bedroom into a wonder cabinet, full of small sculptures and drawings pinned up on every inch of wall space. There are coils of wire and rolls of paper tucked into shelves and drawers. The sculptures remind me of kites, or model airplanes. I say this to Clare one evening, standing in the doorway of her studio in my suit and tie, home from work, ab..
|
|
woman
freedom
love
birds
creativity
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
e1dc12f
|
I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
03943f3
|
That's what alcoholics do. It's in their job description: fall apart and then keep falling apart.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
3e1d843
|
all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath.
|
|
loss
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
124a1ca
|
It's living up to being happy that's the most difficult part.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
5c8683d
|
Tell me, Clare: why on earth would a lovely girl like you want to marry Henry?' Everything in the room seems to hold its breath. Henry stiffens but doesn't say anything. I lean forward and smile at Mr. DeTamble and say, with enthusiasm, as though he has asked me what flavor of ice cream I like best: 'Because he's really, good in bed.' In the kitchen there's a howl of laughter. Mr. DeTamble glances at Henry, who raises his eyebrows and gri..
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
0254b05
|
The cure might be worse than the problem
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
4ed0995
|
Every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
3f64a39
|
Love you..." Henry-" Always..." Oh God oh God-" World enough..." No!" And time..." Henry!"
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
ec1df87
|
she could express her soul with that voice, whenver I listened to her I felt my life meant more than mere biology...she could really hear, she understood structure and she could analyze exactly what it was about a piece of music that had to be rendered just so...she was a very emotional person, Annette. She brought that out in other people. After she died I don't think I ever really felt anything again.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
b4de86f
|
You can still be cool when you're dead. In fact, it's much easier, because you aren't getting old and fat and losing your hair.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
da6bb85
|
When we met I was wrecked, blasted, and damned, and I am slowly pulling myself together because I can see that you are a human being and I would like to be one, too.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
1b1149a
|
Very few people meet their soulmates at age six. So you gotta pass the time somehow. And Ingrid was very - patient. Overly patient. Willing to put up with odd behavior, in the hope that someday I would shape up and marry her martyred ass. And when somebody is that patient, you have to feel grateful, and then you want to hurt them. Does that make any sense?
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
d742c62
|
My apartment is basically a couch, an armchair, and about four thousand books.
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
|
866960f
|
The compelling thing about making art--or making anything, I suppose--is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid , a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe, Nimbue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they transformed mere men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the magicians, disposed armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a swine, a wa..
|
|
|
Audrey Niffenegger |