Home > Author > Amy Fusselman
1 " My dad is dead. And as I type this, by the window, on the rainy day, I am alive, yes. I am living. But sometimes it doesn't feel like I am doing it fast enough, or hard enough, or all the way. And it is times like that when I can understand wanting a cigarette in my hand, then my mouth, then my hand again. Holding the cigarette. Tending to the cigarette. Giving the cigarette what it needs. Tapping it in the ashtray. Sucking on it.Then flicking it in the street, like it meant nothing to me. "
― Amy Fusselman
2 " And this is how I come face to face with my selfishness, because I don't know if I can enjoy this goldfish without knowing that he loves me, or if not loves me, then at least depends on me, i.e., swims up to my fingers greedily when I fill them with salty-smelling rainbow-colored flakes, and wiggle them over his head.And this is disturbing to realize, that I have such difficulty enjoying anything that doesn't know I exist. Especially when I stop and think how big the world is, the world that is not even Japan or India, the world that is the room next door. "
― Amy Fusselman , The Pharmacist's Mate
3 " People can read books and watch children at the same time . . . Of course, both the reading of the books and the watching of the children will be performed in a way best described as half-assed. If you want to read your book in a non-half-assed way, you have to wait until your child is in kindergarten, or you must pay someone to watch your child while you read your book. Even then, however, you must not read the book in your home because the child will find you and jump on you and make reading impossible. You must leave your home, leave your yard, leave your street. You must drive to a cafe in town to read your book. You must run and hide from your child as if your child is serving you a subpoena. This is not insane. It does not make you bad if you do this. "
4 " I was feeling all fertile and blossoming there for a second. And now I just feel like me, on earth. I was floating a little bit there before. I was like a very small version of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. I was puffy and needed handlers. I was lumbering through the air, a couple inches off the ground. I was veering toward lampposts. "
5 " Before my dad died I saw the world as a place. By "place" I mean space. Fixed. Space did not move, but people moved in space. People and space could touch each other, but not very deeply.After he died, I saw that people and space are permeable to each other in a way that people and people are not. I saw that space is like water. People can go inside it. "
