Quotes from William Maxwell

A gentleman doesn't have one set of manners for the house of a poor man and another for the house of someone with an income incomparable to his own.

Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep.

If you turn the imagination loose like a hunting dog, it will often return with the bird in its mouth.

The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice.

The nail doesn't choose the time or the circumstances in which it is drawn to the magnet

Love, even of the most ardent and soul-destroying kind, is never caught by the lens of the camera.

Satin and lace and brown velvet and the faint odor of violets. That was all which was left to him of his love.

My father represented authority, which meant—to me—that he could not also represent understanding.