Wally Lamb

“You sit around feelin' sorry for yourself and you're dead. Sittin' on your ass can get to be a disease worse than what you got.”

“The World is a very old place, so you'll never be able to tell a completely original story”

“And in taking on the subject of themselves-making themselves vulnerable to the unseen reader-they have exchanged powerlessness for for the power that comes with self-awareness.”

“A fiction writer weaves a fabric of lies in hopes of revealing deeper human truths.”

“Jack Speight undid me, then I almost undid myself. But I've undone some of the bad, too, some of the damage. With help. With luck and love.”

“I thought about how love was always the thing that did that - smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt.”

“Let me tell you something, my wife died for Tuesdays ago. Cancer of the colon. We were married forty-one years. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and lose some of that pork of yours. Pretty girl like you - you don't want to do this yourself.”

“You know what 'Dolores' means? It's Latin, means sadness. Our Lady of Sorrow. Why are you so sad?”

“Only there's two sides to every story, you know. You just remember that.”

“Just don't ever let it happen to you, Dolores. Let people just shit all over you. Don't you ever become some man's personal toilet that way I did.”

“You can be two things if you're a woman, Dolores. Betty Crocker or a floozy. Just remember your place - even if it kills you.”

“That's what life's all about Dolores, climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.”

“As my father talked, tears dripped down the side of his face like candle wax. The sight shocked me; until that moment, I had assumed men were as incapable of crying as they were of having babies.”

“When I asked my parents how the baby got inside Ma, they both laughed, and then Daddy told me they had made it with their bodies. I pictured them fully clothed, rubbing furiously against each other, like two sticks making fire.”

“Here is a girl who is pretty in a quiet way. I bet she's had a very sad life.”

“As anxious and limited as that love might have been, it had been love nonetheless.”

“sometimes when you go looking for what you want, you run right into what you need.”

“So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.”

“I wasn't a cynic; I was a banged-up realist.”

“..."I love you" was just three meaningless words without the actions that went with them”

“...there was no shorthand for "I'm sorry." You were obliged to speak those two words.”

“Once you left Easterly, you saw the world was full of these people: ticket sellers, snack bar clerks. They assumed they were better than you just because they knew their own routines.”

“You orchestrate happiness, Dolores - you work at it. You don't catch it as it hurls toward you like a football”

“If you risked love, it took you wherever you wanted to go. If you repressed it, you ended up unhappy.”

“Visualize your solutions. Picture an answer to the problem. Then make the picture real.”

“What if I don’t like adventure?Then cultivate a taste for it. Take a chance. That’s how you grow.”

“I usually learn more from the situations I hate than the ones I love.”

“She preferred to get high on life.”

“Well, get used to it, the whole world is nuts.”

“Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That’s what life’s all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.”

“My memory of that day is like television itself, sharp and clear but unreliable.”

“Life's a shit sandwich, my ass. Life's a polka and don't you forget it!”

“If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and do something about them.”

“All the dead bolts, pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.”

“Zinnia always wants to hug me and pat me because she has a boy my same age named Melvin. I said maybe some day Melvin could come play at our farm, and I could bring him to the maze and show him the shortcuts. Zinnia started crying. That’s when I seen that she has freckles.”

“God, that’s always the thing you have to decide with high school kids: what to make an issue of, what to let go.”

“I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.”

“Being in your mid-thirties brought benefits, I reminded myself. You began to appreciate tidiness, smallness, things in their place. This is the shape your life has taken, I said. Be existential. Go to sleep.”

“You're just catching me during one of my fallow periods, that's all. One of my compost years. I'm expecting a creative leap pretty soon now.”

“Most helpful, Mr. Caelum," she said. "Very, very useful information. And now, shall we hear from Saint Augustine?"I shrugged. "Why not?" I saidDr. P read from a blood-red leather book. "My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry.... Where could my heart find refuge from itself? Where could I go, yet leave myself behind?"She closed the book, then reached across the table and took Maureen's hand in hers. "Does that passage speak to you?" she asked. Mo nodded and began to cry. "And so, Mr. Caelum, good-bye."Because the passage had spoken to me, too, it took me a few seconds to react. "Oh," I said. "You want me to leave?""I do. Yes, yes.”

“But I think this: that whatever prices I've paid, whatever sorrows I shoulder, well, I have blessings, too. Not just my family now, but the others-the ones who have died...They're with me still. They're here...”

“That's the problem with survival of the fittest ... the corpse at your fett. That little inconvenience.”

“What made him most anxious, he told me, was not the big questions -the mercilessness of fate, the possibility of heaven. He was too exhausted, he said, to wrestle with those. But he'd become impatient with the way people wasted their lives, squandered their chances like paychecks. I sat on the bed, massaging his temples, pretending that just the right rubbing might draw out the disease. In the mirror I watched us both -Mr. Pucci, frail and wasted, a talking dead man. And myself with a surgical mask over my mouth, to protect him from me."The irony," he said, "... is that now that I'm this blind man, it's clearer to me now then it's ever been before. What's the line? 'Was blind but now I see...' " He stopped and put his lips to the plastic straw. Juice went halfway up the shaft, then back down again. He motioned the drink away."You accused me of being a saint a while back, pal, but you were wrong. Gary and I were no different. We fought ...said terrible things to each other. Spent one whole weekend not speaking to each other because of a messed-up phone message... That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness -that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.""I know what you mean," I said.His eyes opened wider. For a second he seemed to see me."No you don't," he said. "You mustn’t. He keeps wanting to give you his love, a gift out and out and you dismiss it. Shrug it off because you're afraid.""I'm not afraid. It's more like ..." I watched myself in the mirror above the sink. The mask was suddenly a gag. I listened."l'll give you what I learned from all this," he said. "Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.”

“I didn't respond to him. Couldn't speak at all. Couldn't look at his self-mutilation--not even the clean, bandaged version of it. Instead, I looked at my own rough, stained house painter's hand. They seemed more like puppets than hands. I had no feelings in it either.”

“If I could just write it down in a piece of paper, then maybe she could get a decent night's sleep, eat a little of her dinner. Maybe she could have a minute's worth of peace.”

“I needed her to stop. Needed not to hear the pain in her voice--to see the way she was twisting the pocketbook strap. If she kept talking, she might break down and tell me everything.”

“People had always amazed him, he began. But they amazed him more since the sickness. For as long as the two of them had been together, he said, Gary’s mother had accepted him as her son’s lover, had given them her blessing. Then, at the funeral, she’d barely acknowledged him. Later, when she drove to the house to retrieve some personal things, she’d hunted through her son’s drawers with plastic bags twist-tied around her wrists. “…And yet,” he whispered, “The janitor at school--remember him? Mr. Feeney? --he’d openly disapproved of me for nineteen years. One of the nastiest people I knew. Then when the news about me got out, after I resigned, he started showing up at the front door every Sunday with a coffee milkshake. In his church clothes, with his wife waiting out in the car. People have sent me hate mail, condoms, Xeroxed prayers…” What made him most anxious, he told me, was not the big questions--the mercilessness of fate, the possibility of heaven. He was too exhausted, he said, to wrestle with those. But he’d become impatient with the way people wasted their lives, squandered their chances like paychecks. I sat on the bed, massaging his temples, pretending that just the right rubbing might draw out the disease. In the mirror I watched us both--Mr. Pucci, frail and wasted, a talking dead man. And myself with the surgical mask over my mouth, to protect him from me. “The irony,” he said, “… is that now that I’m this blind man, it’s clearer to me than it’s ever been before. What’s the line? ‘Was blind but now I see…’” He stopped and put his lips to the plastic straw. Juice went halfway up the shaft, then back down again. He motioned the drink away. “You accused me of being a saint a while back, pal, but you were wrong. Gary and I were no different. We fought…said terrible things to each other. Spent one whole weekend not speaking to each other because of a messed up phone message… That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I’m fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness--That’s what makes me sad. Everyone’s so scared to be happy.” “I know what you mean,” I said. His eyes opened wider. For a second he seemed to see me. “No you don’t,” he said. “You mustn’t. He keeps wanting to give you his love, a gift out and out, and you dismiss it. Shrug it off because you’re afraid.” “I’m not afraid. It’s more like…” I watched myself in the mirror above the sink. The mask was suddenly a gag. I listened. “I’ll give you what I learned from all this,” he said. “Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.”

“It's like there's this wave coming toward me, but there's nothing I can do about it. And then it reaches me, crashes over me and...and I'm done for another day. I just give up. Give in to it. Because how do you stop a wave?You don't. And you're wise to recognize your powerlessness to do so. But what you can do is learn how to negotiate this wave. Work within the context of its inevitability.”

“Sarcasm is a suit of armor.”

“It just wasn't for me, and anyway, those people were a lot more far gone than I was. More in my father's league than mine. I just cut back a little. Less beer and liquor, more jogging. I was fine.”