Quotes from Andrew Sean Greer

Robert has never been kind to his body; he's worn it like an old leather coat tossed in oceans and left crumpled in corners.

A stroke. Robert has never been kind to his body . . . It is only the carrier of that wonderful mind, after all. A case for the crown. And Robert has cared for that mind like a tiger with her young: he has given up drinking and drugs, kept a strict schedule of sleep. He is good, he is careful. And to steal that--to steal his mind--burglar Life!Like cutting a Rembrandt from its frame.

It is, after all, almost a miracle they are here. Not because they've survived the booze, the hashish, the migraines. Not that at all. It's that they've survived everything in life, humiliations and disappointments and heartaches and missed opportunities, bad dads and bad jobs and bad sex and bad drugs, all the trips and mistakes and face-plants of life, to have made it to fifty and to have made it here: to this frosted-cake landscape

Life was not hard; you shouldered it bravely, knowing all the time that if you sent the signal, help would arrive.

It's like fitting a hand-me-down suit. It's luck. Not love. Not that it isn't nice to have luck. Maybe the only way to think of it is being at the center of all beauty. Just by chance, today we get to be in the center of all beauty.

A pang of love and regret; the name of an old amour on your cruise ship's passenger list.

With lovers, though, the end is always there. It is a death as certain as the real death, and those of us in love, as at the bedside, begin to prepare ourselves. We might say it isn't working, or I can't give you what you need, and yet a day later there he is in your arms, and who can help it? There is the good-bye, and the good-bye, and the good-bye, and which will stick? Who can ever say, this is the last? One one is true, but all of them feel true, and the tears we shed are equal every time.

he had no idea what to do about death. Two thousand years of flaming Viking boats and Celtic rites and Irish wakes and Puritan worship and Unitarian hymns, and still he was left with nothing.

There follows, I am sad to say, a very long ride on a very slow road…to your final place of rest." He sighs, for he has spoken the truth for all men.

river and is very old and water stained in ways that would delight a painter and trouble a contractor;

As with almost every sunset, but with this one in particular: shut the fuck up.

Hard to feel bad for a middle-aged white man.

Arise and shine, for thy light has come" (Isaiah 60:1).

Is there a bucket of blood hanging high in the auditorium rafters, waiting to be dropped

It is only the carrier of that wonderful mind, after all. A case for the crown.

I was at a cocktail party in a new city, looking out at the view, when I felt the sensation of someone opening a window and turned. No one had opened a window; a new person had simply entered the room.

HE WAS NOT THE BEST BUT HE WAS THE BEST I EVER HAD

His brain sits before its cash register again, charging him for old shames as if he has not paid before.

This is once-in-a-lifetime suffering and pain and heartache and yet it may be your only chance to decide what you really want. None of this I don't want to change bullshit. Hell no—you've changed. That's happened. Now what? Everything changes and this one fucking time, you're in charge of it, my God, so choose! Make the wrong choice, that's fine! That's fine! But choose.

For is my story really so unusual? To wake each morning as if things had gone differently -- the dead come back, the lost returned, the beloved in our arms -- is it really any more magic than the ordinary madness of hope?

Be in love, you will be happy.

Mescal turns out to be a drink that tastes as if someone has put their cigarette out in it. You drink it, he is informed, with an orange slice that has been coated in toasted worms.

Arthur, happiness is bullshit. That is the wisdom I give you from my twenty-two hours of being fifty. That is the wisdom from my love life. You'll understand at midnight.

We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding.