Quotes from Andre Dubus III

If my father had been working at the 7-Eleven in Wyoming last night, what would he have done? Would he have gone for Elroy's vital-organ zones? Or would he have aimed for his elbows, knees, and shoulders?

He thought of winter coming, how it's the only season that stays like it will never leave;

The JD wasn't going down smooth at all. Not like good stuff should. Instead of a warm slow seeping, it seemed to be kicking its way down his throat. And the buzz felt wrong; it was coming too fast, after only a few shots, and it wasn't rounding out any of the sharp edges. It was somehow leaving everything ragged.

But now his body feels like some dumb beast he merely exists inside, and every now and then it lets him know it needs to do something: To eat. To piss or shit. To move or just lie down and rest.

On my way out with the rest, I glanced back at Bowman. he was on this knees, his hair in his face, his nose and split lips dripping with blood. He was staring down at the floor like he'd been waiting for this and now it had finally happened; he look relieved.

The house was quiet, my room dark and still. I lay awake and thought of all the good men on TV who'd been shot in the head. I saw again the dead soldiers lying on the ground , and until Pop had cried over us, I hadn't thought much about Jeb and me having to go and fight, too. But in only nine years I'd be as old as the dead, and it'd be my turn, wouldn't it?

Her thighs are oiled and dark, and oblivion never felt as good as it does now

She tried to stand but he had her by the hair and with his other hand he was jerking back and forth on himself, and she couldn't breathe and then he let out a groan as warm spurts fell wetly across her cheek and nose and eye, and Davey was laughing as if he'd just scored points in a game, and Luke let go of her hair and she fell back on her hands.

On the hottest days you could smell the wood from the lumberyard on the other side of Water Street, the piss and shit of the drunks in the weeds, the engine exhaust, the sweet lead of the paint flaking off our clapboards.

I felt more like me than I ever had, as if the years I'd lived so far had formed layers of skin and muscle over myself that others saw as me when the real one had been underneath all along, and writing—even writing badly—had peeled away those layers, and I knew then that if I wanted to stay this awake and alive, if I wanted to stay me, I would have to keep writing.

Lester wanted to rise up out of this like a cloud, to drift over the valley and shore to the Pacific, to dissolve into its huge green expanse like rain.

Somehow she was becoming the kind of woman she didn't like, somebody who felt one way but smiled it off in a mask of cheerfulness, the kind of woman who got very good at small talk.

I'm one of those writers who can't talk about what they're working on. The entire four years I was writing 'House of Sand and Fog,' my wife never saw a word of it. I just have to keep it in the womb, and then everyone can have a crack at it.

I've had a lot of glamour come my way in the last 10 years - you know, movie stars and mansions and red carpets and trips to Europe and crazy stuff I never would have imagined - and I look at them as if I'm the bartender in the corner of the room. They've never gone into my psyche. I look at them with distance, and wonder.

I work out four days a week in the off-season, and in the warm, running weather months, I do five days. A push/pull regime of weightlifting, cycling, and the occasional Saturday or Sunday run with my oldest son, even if it's cold out.

Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book.

My dad and mom divorced when I was around ten, and I didn't live with him after that, though he was close by and we saw each other weekly. I wasn't really aware that he was a writer; I didn't start reading his writing until I was about fifteen. It occurred to me then that my dad was kind of special; he's still one of my favorite writers.

I was really surprised at the success of 'House of Sand and Fog,' because it is so awfully dark. Believe it or not, when writing it, I never had the word 'tragedy' in my head - I wasn't trying to write a dark book at all.

I got a degree in sociology, didn't read much fiction in college, and I was a pretty political, left-wing type of guy. I wanted to do some kind of work in social change and make things better for the poor man, and I was very romantic and passionate about it.

I was always a sensitive, sweet kid, but I got brutalized and I became brutal. And frankly, I don't think it was my natural makeup. I don't think its anyone's natural makeup to be a violent brawler.