Charles Baxter

“At least with pets, and for all I know , people too, intelligence and quick-wittiness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.”

“intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.”

“You can not figure out love without figuring out death, too, but the effort it takes can knock the wind out of you. Love is the first cousin of death, they're acquainted with each other, they go to the same family reunions.”

“If you're smart, you keep happiness to yourself.”

“When you break the heart of the philosopher, you must apply great force and cunning strategy, but when the deed is completed, the heart lies in great stony ruin at your feet. If you succeed in breaking it, the job is done once and for all. It will not be repaired.”

“Because it is the Midwest, no one really glitters because no one has to, it's more of a dull shine, like frequently used silverware.”

“Making love to him was like going through a car wash, except you came out dirtier and more alive at the other end.”

“To his great relief she recommended no course of action. She listened. She didn't believe in giving advice, even when asked.”

“Men have strength, Miss Ferenczi said, but no true magic. That is why men fall in love with women but women do not fall in love with men: they just love being loved.”

“Every day became an epic of endurance.”

“Their imaginations put the scene on a film loop. Guiltily, they watched it until their mental screens began to wash the rest of the past away.”

“Against the odds, they refuse to succeed.”

“Experience and disappointments had made us methodical.”

“I felt as though I were in the presence of one of God's more complicated pranks.”

“Of course they were children, he knew that, and that wasn't it. They gave off a terrible glow. They had the blank glow of angels. They lived smack in the middle of reality and never gave it a minute's thought. They'd never felt like actors. They'd never been sick with irony. The long tunnel of their thoughts had never swallowed them. They'd never had restless sleepless nights, the urgent wordless unexplainable wrestling matches with the shadowy bands of soul-thieves. God damn it, Sault thought. Everybody gets to be happy except me. Saul heard Anne's cries. The sun was sweating all over his forehead. He felt faint, and Jewish, as usual. He turned on the radio. It happened to be tuned to a religious station and some choir was singing "When Jesus Wept.”

“At least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.”

“An unthinkable thought is not one that hasn't occurred to somebody, nor is it a thought that somebody considers to be wrong. An unthinkable thought threatens a person's entire existence and is therefore subversive and consequently can be thought of and has been thought of, but has been pushed out of the mind's currency and subsumed into its margins where it festers. Dark nights of the soul are lit by inconceivable ideas. Any story may draw its source from the power of an unthinkable thought.”

“Charm sometimes has a habit of taking its leave of you. (p.256)”

“My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.”

“As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it's the unhappy ones who create the stories. I'm no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.”

“Anyway, what I've just told you was what prompted the chair incident. I had grown big, and he was trying to belittle me.”

“Art is not a sack race.”

“She has a winning smile. She wins, she always wins.”

“I don't think that most women have to prove that they're real women. You live long enough, you graduate to being real.”

“Savor the imminent weirdness of the day.”

“His was the kind of beauty for which you would pay the price of a lifetime of sorrow and all the varieties of rage. Eventually, you would have to go to church to get rid of him.”

“If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has. ”

“When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.”

“The point is that although love may die, what is said on its behalf cannot be consumed by the passage of time, and forgiveness is everything.”

“On the first floor near the foot of the stairs, we have placed on the wall an antique mirror so old that it can't reflect anything anymore. Its surface, worn down to nubbled grainy gray stubs, has lost one of its dimensions. like me, its glimmerless. You can't see into it now, just past it. Depth has been replace by texture. The mirror gives back nothing and makes no productive claim upon anyone. The mirror has been so completely worn away that you have to learn to live with what it refuses to do. That's its beauty.”

“When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.”

“You know, there's something heartsick about parties like this. Look at us. We're all pretending to be smart, as if intelligence were the cure for our anguish.”

“The worst mistakes I've made have been the ones directed by sweet-natured hopefulness.”

“As my mother once said to me, ‘They’re quite crazy, dear – men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you.”

“Oh”, he said. He was trying to smile, but it was a brave smile, a sickroom smile, and I was sorry I had caused it. I had apparently taken the wind out of his sails. His discouragement wasn’t a good sign. Men should stand up to me more than that. They have to fight back to satisfy me. They have to face me down.”

“In February, the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the locals. The snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers, to the cuffs, and once you’re inside, the snow clings to you psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor. The past soaks into you in this weather because the present is missing almost entirely.”

“There's nothing to talk about to strangers anymore, if you know what I mean. Everything I want to say, I say to her.”

“[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.”

“Everybody should customize their names.”

“There is no weather in malls.”

“In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.”

“Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.”

“Ethics is a dream.”

“Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.”

“You are a real find and you keep me satisfied, up to a point. After all, I'm a malcontent and you can't change that.”

“You think that what I've told you is an anecdote. But really it isn't. It's my whole life. It's the only story I have.”

“What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you--if you happen to be me--with homecoming queens first, then girls next door, and finally anybody who might be pleased to see you now and then at the dinner table and in bed on occasion. You look up from reading the newspaper and realize that no one loves you, and no one burns for you.”

“it helps that in michigan everyone goes inside from november through april. but from may until october they are outside, on display, and all of a sudden if you are single, you have a window to heaven and no way at all to get in.”

“The twentieth century has built up a powerful set of intellectual shortcuts and devices that help us defend ourselves against moments when clouds suddenly appear to think.”

“Literature is not an instruction manual.”