Rosemary Mahoney Professions : Fiction writer Born : January 28, 1961 Browse All Authors Top 30 quotes by Rosemary Mahoney My mother had faith in me, had more faith in me than I had in myself, and knowing that she did made me try to find faith. She believed in trying things. Rosemary Mahoney myself me faith mother I think the most useful thing you can do as a writer is to reconstruct real life with all its color, hardship, joy, and intrigue. If you're interested in people, you honor them best, I think, by making the fullest possible picture of them. Your subjects may - and from my experience probably will - protest your portrait of them. Rosemary Mahoney best you experience life In 'A Likely Story,' I wanted to recreate the events, the mood, and the imagery of my life as a teenager. I was thirty-seven when I wrote it. Rosemary Mahoney my-life story mood life I grew up in New England at the edge of the Atlantic and have for many years been an avid rower. I've rowed in various places, including the Ganges in India, the River Shannon in Ireland, and the Sea of Galilee. Rosemary Mahoney river new india sea The Egyptian Nile, though it does have its own particular hazards, is subject to none of what I find in Rhode Island. Since the Aswan High Dam was built in 1973, the Nile has become something of a grand canal. It is wide, flat, slow, and so calm it verges on the geriatric. Rosemary Mahoney slow island own calm Americans generally associate boats with leisure. Vastly less prosperous, Egyptians associate them with nothing but labour. Rowing a boat is something a fisherman is forced to do to make a living; how could such an activity bring me - a woman no less - pleasure? Rosemary Mahoney woman nothing me boat The night sky in Egypt is a swirling mass of stars so bright and numerous the sky seems to tremble with the ice-blue weight of them. Rosemary Mahoney egypt stars sky night If one person in a group of ten is missing the tip of his little finger, I will notice it almost immediately. This extreme attention to visual detail is not a virtue, just a fact of my person. It happens seemingly involuntarily and strikes me as neither good nor bad. Rosemary Mahoney bad good me attention To me, the remarkable thing is it's pretty much unanimous the way blind people have been perceived in all cultures and for millennia. The first is, if they can't see, they must be stupid. The second one is, and this is a very old one, that blindness is such a terrible thing that it must be a curse from God for some evil that you committed. Rosemary Mahoney me you god people We always think, 'Well, for a person who's blind, it must be an amazing, joyful miracle if by some chance their sight is restored to them.' Now, this may be true for blind people who lost their vision at a later age. It's rarely true for people who were born blind or who go blind at a very young age. Rosemary Mahoney amazing vision age people Similar Authors Brian Stableford fiction-writer Brian Lumley fiction-writer Brad Linaweaver fiction-writer Armin Joseph Deutsch fiction-writer Andrew Revkin fiction-writer Amy Plum fiction-writer All Authors