Audrey Niffenegger Quotes - Page 4

I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.

I told Ing once that she dances like a German and she didn't like it, but it's true: she dances seriously, like lives are hanging in the balance, like precision dancing can save the starving children of India.

That’s the thing about living vicariously; it’s so much faster than actual living. In a few minutes we’ll be worrying about names for the children.

I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room

You're the oddest person I've ever met, you couldn't get rid of me if you tried.

He looks sad. Or maybe that's just how he looks when he isn't doing something else with his face.

And Clare, always Clare.

...all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath.

There's always world enough and time.

He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.

I look at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I ever loved

I wish for a moment that time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say "I'm sorry" until it is as meaningless air.

We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like being separated.

The kissed surprised him because it had been so long since he'd kissed anyone but Elspeth. It surprised Valentina because she had hardly ever kissed anyone that way - to her, kissing had always been more theoretical than physical. Afterwards she stood with her eyes closed, lips parted, face tilted. Robert thought, She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her.

I don't want to boss anyone and I don't want to be bossed.

Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust.

Why do you have a cigarette lighter in your glove compartment?" her husband, Jack, asked her. "I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson

It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: “It’s just that I thought maybe you were married to me.

Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?

But you make me happy. It's living up to being happy that's the difficult part.

My family isn't posh; they're musicians.

The compelling thing about making art — or making anything, I suppose — is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe, Nimbue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they transformed mere men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the magicians, disposed armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a swine, a war, a laurel tree. Call it art.

Each spine was an encapsulated memory, each book represented hours, days of pleasure, of immersion into words.

Running is many things to me: survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude. It is proof of my corporeal existence, my ability to control my movement through space if not time, and the obedience, however temporary, of my body to my will. As I run I displace air, and things come and go around me, and the path moves like a filmstrip beneath my feet.

CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.