Top 8 Quotes by Maile Meloy

To be a kid is to be invisible and to listen, and to interpret things that aren't necessarily meant for you to hear--because how else do you find out about the world?

To be a kid is to be invisible and to listen, and to interpret things that aren't necessarily meant for you to hear--because how else do you find out about the world?

Maile Meloy

Kids, World, Invisible

His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him.

Maile Meloy

Heart, Years, Firsts

Maile Meloy (2010). “Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It”, p.173, Canongate Books

The role of the human brain was to rationalize suffering.

Maile Meloy

Brain, Suffering, Roles

"The Proxy Marriage" by Maile Meloy, www.newyorker.com. May 21, 2012.

At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.

Maile Meloy

Loneliness, Simplicity, Nerves

Maile Meloy (2010). “Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It”, p.161, Canongate Books

I settled in with The Uninvited Guests thinking I knew what kind of Edwardian pleasures were in store: the fraught dinner party in an endangered, rambling house, the feuding family, the rich suitor, the disruptive visitors. The novel has all of those delightful things, but it also defied every one of my expectations. I saw none of it coming. I read it in one breathless sitting, and finished wanting to give it to everyone I know.

Maile Meloy

Party, Thinking, Giving

When they started to drain a swamp where birds and fish had lived, for a new housing development down the road from his apartment, Steven watched the protests and the preparations with interest. The bird people were furious, the developers unmovable, and Steven was filled with relief that the fight wasn't his. Nothing here was his... He thought there should have been something sad about how little he was tied up with the place, but instead it felt like freedom. He was free because it wasn't his water here, and they weren't his fish.

Maile Meloy

Fighting, Should Have, People