The handy thing about being a father is that the historic standard is so pitifully low. Michael Chabon More Quotes by Michael Chabon More Quotes From Michael Chabon Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity. Michael Chabon goldenagematter That's a big trunk," James said, as we jammed in the leathery old case that looked so much like the black heart of some leviathan. "It fits a tuba, three suitcases, a dead dog, and a garment bag almost perfectly." "That's just what they used to say in the ads," I said. Michael Chabon blackdogheart It was nice standing out in the darkness, in the damp grass, with spring coming on and a feeling in my heart of imminent disaster. Michael Chabon niceheartspring Only love could pick a nested pair of steel Bramah locks. Michael Chabon lockspairssteel He had no idea of how long his life would one day seem to have gone on; how daily present the absence of love would come to feel. “Just watch me,” he said. Michael Chabon feels-justlongideas Nothing that had ever happened to him, not the shooting of Oyster, or the piteous muttering expiration of John Wesley Shannenhouse, or the death of his father, or internment of his mother and grandfather, not even the drowning of his beloved brother, had ever broken his heart quite as terribly as the realization, when he was halfway to the rimed zinc hatch of the German station, that he was hauling a corpse behind him Michael Chabon brothermotherfather We are accustomed to repeating the cliché, and to believing, that 'our most precious resource is our children.' But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. The true scarcity we face is practicing adults, of people who know how marginal, how fragile, how finite their lives and their stories and their ambitions really are but who find value in this knowledge, even a sense of strange comfort, because they know their condition is universal, is shared. Michael Chabon ambitionbelievechildren There are no moments more painful for a parent than those in which you contemplate your child's perfect innocence of some imminent pain, misfortune, or sorrow. That innocence (like every kind of innocence children have) is rooted in their trust of you, one that you will shortly be obliged to betray; whether it is fair or not, whether you can help it or not, you are always the ultimate guarantor or destroyer of that innocence. Michael Chabon parentingpainchildren A story begins with this nebulous feeling that’s hard to get a hold of and you’re testing your feelings and assumptions, testing what you believe. They end up turning into keepsakes and mementos –like amber in which a memory gets trapped. Michael Chabon feelingsmemoriesbelieve My Saturday Night. My Saturday night is like a microwave burrito. Very tough to ruin something that starts out so bad to begin with. Michael Chabon ruinsburritosnight See you in the funny papers," he said. Jaunty, he reminded himself; always jaunty. In my panache is their hope for salvation. Michael Chabon salvationpapersaid Drunk, Jane spoke as though she were Nancy Drew. I was a fool for a girl with a dainty lexicon. Michael Chabon fooldrunkgirl The rest of Sitka's homicides are so-called crimes of passion, which is a shorthand way of expressing the mathematical product of alcohol and firearms. Michael Chabon passionalcoholway I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag. Michael Chabon cuttingideasson ... But he believed that every great love was in some measure a terrible mistake. Michael Chabon great-loveterriblemistake Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. If a writer doesn't give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves, if he doesn't court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family or party apparatchiks... the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth. Michael Chabon wrathpainparty Novelist time is reptile time; novelists tend to be ruminant and brooding, nursers of ancient grievances, second-guessers, Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks, retrospectators, endlessly, like slumping hitters, studying the film of their old whiffs. Michael Chabon reptilesnoveliststuesday [I]n 1938, Superman appeared. He had been mailed to the offices of National Periodical Publications from Cleveland, by a couple of Jewish boys who had imbued him with the powers of a hundred men, of a distant world, and of the full measure of their bespectacled adolescent hopefulness and desperation. Michael Chabon couplemenboys To me, Clark Kent in a phone booth and Houdini in a packing crate, they were one and the same thing," he would learnedly expound at WonderCon or Angoulême or to the editor of The Comics Journal . "You weren't the same person when you came out as when you went in. Michael Chabon houdinieditorsphones [Comics] were viewed as the literary equivalent of bubblegum cards, meant to be poked into the spokes of a young mind where they would produce a satisfying but entirely bogus rumble of pleasure. Michael Chabon pleasuremindcards
