During every book, I have a nervous breakdown. Usually it's about two thirds of the way through the book - I'm just comatose on the couch for at least a week, and I eventually break through it and have an answer about how to fix the thing. Andrew Sean Greer More Quotes by Andrew Sean Greer More Quotes From Andrew Sean Greer We are each the love of someone's life. Andrew Sean Greer It takes too much imagination to see the sorrows of people we take for happy. Their real battles take place, like those of the stars, in some realm of light imperceptible to the human eye. It is a feat of the mind to guess another's heart. Andrew Sean Greer stars real heart Some things are so impossible, so fantastic, that when they happen, you are not at all surprised. Their sheer impossibility has made you imagine them too many times in your head, and when you find yourself on that longed-for moonlit path, it seems unreal but still, somehow, familiar. You dreamed of it, of course; you know it like a memory. Andrew Sean Greer finding-yourself path memories Here is a writer possessing the greatest talent: that of fully inhabiting the lives of others. Spargo conjures up these two as no one has done before. Scott and Zelda become, in Spargo's remarkable novel, not people of history but of literature, and reminders of what we fight for, what we fail to win, and the beauty that abides between. A marvel of a book. Andrew Sean Greer fighting winning book For me, the historical and genealogical library is the one I use. I'm working on, I'll say, it's a time travel novel. I haven't written very much of it. That's the dirty secret of the Cullman center: The writers don't write their fiction there, they just do their research. Andrew Sean Greer historical writing dirty Does love always form, like a pearl, around the hardened bits of life? Andrew Sean Greer pearls form doe No one would have known, from how he held my hand, [that] over the years of heartache he had hatched a plot to change my life forever. He held his grip and would not let me go. I do not know what joins the parts of an atom, but it seems what binds one human to another is pain. Andrew Sean Greer pain hands years A lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so if the romance is new, a thousand if we're married to him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs an entire person. What we each create, since whatever is missing is filled by our imagination, is the person we wish him to be. The less we know him, of course, the more we love him. And that's why we always remember that first rapturous night when he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only when he's dead. Andrew Sean Greer imagination heart night When you were a little girl, Madam.....was this the woman you dreamed of becoming? Andrew Sean Greer becoming girl littles It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one's life for love. Andrew Sean Greer stupid brave beautiful Surely words are just the background music when passion pounces on a soul. Andrew Sean Greer backgrounds passion soul The possibilities. Is there any greater pain to know what could be, and yet be powerless to make it be? Andrew Sean Greer possibility pain knows I love going to writers' colonies in pastoral settings where there's nothing to do, but either walk around or read a book or work on your book. Andrew Sean Greer colony walks book When I meet a woman whose energy falters at the first barrier,she seems to fade beside my mother. Andrew Sean Greer energy mother firsts Despite all their fears, we ask very little of the ones who never loved us. We do not ask for sympathy or pain or compassion. We simply want to know why. Andrew Sean Greer pain compassion want How hollow to have no secrets left; you shake yourself and nothing rattles. You're boneless as an anemone. Andrew Sean Greer shakes left secret So tell me gentleman, tell me the time and place where it was easy to be a woman. Andrew Sean Greer gentleman easy It may be a childish torment, but we do not get to choose our demons. Andrew Sean Greer torment demon may Perhaps love is a minor madness. And as with madness, it's unendurable alone. The one person who can relieve us is of course the sole person we cannot go to: the one we love. So instead we seek out allies, even among strangers and wives, fellow patients who, if they can't touch the edge of our particular sorrow, have felt something that cuts nearly as deep. Andrew Sean Greer perhaps-love cutting love-is How remarkable we are in our ability to hide things from ourselves - our conscious minds only a small portion of our actual minds, jellyfish floating on a vast dark sea of knowing and deciding. Andrew Sean Greer knowing sea dark
