Quotes from Amy Bloom

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.)

the Old West, mysterious, serious, with great beauty at every vista and terrible things happening whenever any people appeared.)

Yeah, he said, you'll know he's the one because when he says he'll do anything for you, he means it. Don't you fall for the big hearts and flowers, acting like it's the movies. Bunch of bullshit, he said. Pardon me. You want the guy who'll get your medicine in the middle of the night, even in a blizzard, even after twenty years. You want the guy who shows you every day, shoveling the walk, carrying your groceries, shows you how much he loves you. It's not about talking the talk, Eva.

I couldn't ask her anything. There wasn't a single question to which I'd get the answer I wanted.

married. Edgar went back into the parlor

And why is Saint Paula a Saint? She dumps her four kids at a convent. She runs off to Hajira with Saint Jerome. How is that a saint? You've got shitty mothers all over America who would love to dump their kids and travel.

I got by. I lived amputated, which sounds worse than it felt. I learned to do all kinds of large and small tasks, with part of me missing, and I feel pretty sure that the people who watched me in the world thought I was entirely able-bodied.

We think- oh, we will never forget these northern lights, but we do. What we remember is only the curling picture in the left-hand drawer (Presque Isle, Maine, 1934) or a gorgeous half-page photo in an old travel magazine, but what we saw when we held hands, lifting our chins to the sky as if we could leap into the jagged, jeweled brilliance above us, was seen for ten seconds only, and never again.

His charm and cheer blinded you, made you deaf to your own thoughts, until all you could do was nod and smile, while the frost came down, killing you where you stood.

AB: It's a great gift. It was the training: to listen, to observe. Those skills are very much what you need as a writer. Keep your mouth shut and see what's happening around you. Don't finish people's sentences for them. Don't just hear what they say, but also how they behave while they're saying it. That was great training for writing.

She insulted conservatives and cowards every time she opened her mouth

He read the first one all the way through and breathed in the love, that hot, hurting feeling under your ribs...Love that made life matter even when you were just looking back at it.

Instead of a trail of fire roaring through, hose people get small candles steadily lighting the way home until death do they part, and only the young are stupid enough to think that those two old people, him gimping, her squinting, are not in love.

my mother must have said to me a hundred times that men needed to be handled right and a woman who couldn't handle her man had only herself to blame.

Although I won't pretend our paths are likely to cross, I hope you know that I will be delighted if they do.

What is the body? Endurance. What is love? Gratitude. What is hidden in our chests? Laughter. What else? Compassion).

He says, I prepared some… and then he squeezes my hands tightly and he begins to cry. "I love you so much," he says. "That's all I can say. I love you so, so much and I will love you every day of my life.

Il passato è come una candela posta a una distanza inadeguata: troppo vicina per renderti quieto, troppo lontana per confortarti.

He wanted to be in the center of the city, in either the oldest or the most modern part, as

he felt about a meal in a restaurant the way people feel about money and good health: always better to have it.

I could feel him through a glass and I was banging on it, screaming at him: Why is there a glass between us? Where did it come from? Take it down! And Brian looked at me with puzzled, irritated concern and said, in effect, What glass? And, Please, please stop complaining about this thing that isn't even there.

you notes, and defended him against all comers. I was as good a parent as I knew how to be, because there was something about the job that mattered to me (well, not "something": my own mother, who was a loving presence and a terrible cook but never protected me from anything or anyone, handicapped as she was by besetting anxiety).

Every day is an up-and-down. (Roller-coaster ride makes it sound thrilling; it is not thrilling. The ups and the downs both hurt, it's a mistake to scream, and nothing moves quickly.)

You are the dawn, rolling back the dark until the beach glitters and the girls return with their buckets, holding hands.