The World According to Bensenhaver,” the book jacket flap said, “is about a man who is so fearful of bad things happening to his loved ones that he creates an atmosphere of such tension that bad things are almost certain to occur. And they do.
History is composed of the smallest, often undetected mistakes.
There was something about the Midwest in her that Wallingford loved.
But that’s the test, Ruthie. The test is, sometimes there’s no place to pull over – sometimes you can’t stop, and you have to find a way to keep going. You got it?
You are never over your childhood, not until you are under the train – unter dem Zug.
Readers vary, when it comes to having the imagination to enjoy a story outside their own experiences.
As Em would one day act out for me, pantomimists are always misquoted.
Loved ones leave us and we go on – ghosts or no ghosts, my way or Molly’s, we still see them. As Matthew and I knew, the dead don’t entirely go away – not if you see them on the subway, or in your heart.
Lies of omission count as lies, sweetie – they can be the worst ones.
You don’t choose your nightmares; they choose you.
It’s hard to pretend to be born without causing offense.
This is the way confessing works – once you start, you can’t stop.
When the lies of omission unravel, so does the story.
Some readers and writers don’t look like readers or writers.
The snowshoer had written about Reagan – just one sentence, after seeing her friends who were dying of AIDS. “If or when there’s another plague, I hope America has a better plague president than Ronald Reagan,” the little English teacher wrote.
I’d been a writer long enough to sense when someone has the soul of a reader – like a poor cowboy, who’s not had much opportunity to read.
Even I knew better than to sleep with a ghost. And it was the wrong time for a moral dilemma.
If women are Republicans, they’ve been brainwashed – the men have brainwashed them,” Nana said.
When you write screenplays that don’t get made, you lose your sense of humor about the bad movies that do get made.
I just don’t dare to make up everything, like you do.” I don’t make up everything, but when I use things that actually happened, I always change something; I try to make what happens not exactly true.