Quotes from Andrew Sean Greer

Oh, California! The statistically impossible blondness; the ubiquity of sunglasses, as if everyone has just been to the ophthalmologist; the non-native date palms that, like many non-natives, seem positively patriotic about their newfound country; the pretense of sun and warmth in chill October, such as here, in Eleanor's convertible, where, to counteract the cold, she has turned the heat up high. It feels to Less like the kind of deep act of denial seen only at family holidays.

But Arthur, there is hope.' The great author quietly says: 'We are that fraction of old magic that remains.

the rescue. And today Less was one of them.

Don't we all look at our beloveds sometimes and think, Why do I stay? Why do we stay? There is something vital in staying.

the grief...had never been over him, a clumsy foreign child. It had always been for themselves, so young then, learning that you could not tailor your hopes like a suit and expect them to fit forever

Because at funerals, forever is the theme of the day.

One could not withdraw the days of one's youth in retirement and throw them on the fire to warm old bones.

I miss when my future was more interesting to me than my past

Nothing to do but laugh about it. True for everything.

You're going to the wedding, apparently. - I'm reading a poem at the wedding [of his to be ex husband]

The brain is so wrong, all the time. [...] Wrong about what time it is, and who people are, and where home is: wrong wrong wrong. The lying brain.

Arthur Less has been out of place many times in his life... He has done them all. So being in a place of utter misrule and chaos is no problem for him. In some way, that is the comfort zone of Arthur Less. He knows, in such places, where he stands.

È quasi impossibile rendere il senso della vera tristezza; è una creatura degli abissi che non può mai comparire alla vista.

Arthur, you're going to have to figure something out. You see all these men over fifty, these skinny men with mustaches. Imagine all the dieting and exercise and effort of fitting into your suits from when you were thirty! And then what? You're still a dried-up old man. Screw that. Clark always says you can be thin or you can be happy, and, Arthur, I have already tried thin.

Less cannot imagine Delaware being a miracle to anyone.

Years away at sea, husbands coming back — if they came back — having seen things you cannot imagine, having wrestled with the unknown and, somehow, won? All this with barely enough money made to cover the debt accrued? I imagine it was like being married to a novelist.

My mom is an experimental chemist and physicist, so she is a cut-and-dried, nuts-and-bolts kind of woman, and my dad is a theoretical chemist, so we were definitely raised with his philosophical point of view: imaginary numbers and dimensions beyond our own. That's the kind of thing we would talk about.

There's a certain point in chemistry and in calculus where I reached the end of my abilities, and I realized, 'This is where I'm stupid.'

My grandmother wore a beehive hairdo even when it was out of fashion.

Can you call and thank reviewers? I always wondered that.

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, and they all seem helpful.

My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Poppy, had us each write a 'novel,' whatever that meant to us. It must have been 10 pages long, and we bound it and colored the front. And she wrote on mine, 'I can't wait till your real novel comes out. Give me a call.'

I heard you had to get 200 rejections before you got published.

'The Story Of A Marriage' was initially a short story I wrote, and before that, it was a family story. It was a story that a relative of mine told me about herself in the '50s, and it was a story that no one else in my family believes, and it might not be true.