Home > Author > Douglas Kennedy
1 " Words matter, words have import. "
― Douglas Kennedy
2 " We try so hard to put our mark on things, we like to tell ourselves that what we do has import or will last. But the truth is, we're all just passing through. So little survives us. And when we're gone, it's simply the memory of others that keeps our time here alive. And when they're gone... That's why - when I go - I'm asking that my dust gets tossed on the water. Because ends up floating away. "
― Douglas Kennedy , Leaving the World
3 " The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else. "
― Douglas Kennedy , The Pursuit of Happiness
4 " ...there are certain tragedies from which we never recover. We may eventually adjust to the sense of loss that pervades every waking hour of the day. We may accept the desperate sadness that colors all perception. We may even learn to live with the loss. But it doesn't mean we will ever fully cauterize the wound or shut away the pain in some steel-tight box and consider it vanquished. "
― Douglas Kennedy , The Woman in the Fifth
5 " Can we always really look forward, as everyone endlessly advises us to do? Or do we have to hold on to certain key vestiges of our past- as painful, as terrible as they might be- as a way of understanding that there are certain things in life that change us so radically that they stay with us forever? Can we really close the door on that which still haunts us? "
― Douglas Kennedy , The Moment
6 " I wanted to get it all down on paper; a record of what happened----just in case something did happen to me---- and to try and convince myself that I was not living in a state of permanent delusion. But why should you accept this story as given? It’s just a story----my story. And like all stories, it isn’t, in the pure sense of the word, true. It’s just my version of the truth. Which means it is----and isn’t----true at all. "
7 " We can rarely tell others what we really think about them--not just because it would so wound them, but also because it would so wound ourselves. "
8 " We can never change the story that made us what we are. It's a story accumulated by the manifold complexities-its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what happened to us. And we carry everywhere all that has shaped us-all that we lacked, all that we wanted but never got; all that we got but never wanted; all that was found and lost. "
9 " Wie bald 'nicht jetz' 'nie' wird. How soon 'not now' becomes 'never'. "
10 " Because there is no meaning to be found in the arbitrary nature of things., It's all random. Just as space is blue. And birds fly through it. "
11 " We all talk about how much we hate lies. Yet we prefer, so often, to be lied to....because it allows us to dodge all those painful truths we'd rather not hear. "
12 " All our stories are simultaneously unique and desperately similar, aren't they? "
13 " There is much to be said for solitude. "
14 " But the strangest of all sensations is the moment after you have been freed of the baby--and the baby of you--and you are handed this tiny shriveled creature to hold for the first time... and you feel a mixture of unbelievable instant love and desperate fear. "
15 " We all crave latitude in life, yet simultaneously dig ourselves deeper into domestic entrapment. We may dream of traveling light but accumulate as much as we can to keep us burdened and rooted to one spot. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Because-though we all muse on the theme of escape-we stil find the notion of responsibility irresistible. The career, the house, the dependents, the debt-it grounds us. Provides us with a necessary security, a reason to get upin the morning. It narrows choice and ergo, gives us certainty. And though just about every man I know rails against being so cul-de-saced by domesic burden, we all embrace it. Embrace it with a vengeance. "
― Douglas Kennedy , The Big Picture
16 " ...hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn't. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time "
17 " There were moments when I felt seriously unhinged; when I was convinced that I would never, ever recover from what had happened, when it was absolutely clear to me that life from this point on would be constant agony ... "
18 " ... we seemed to possess a similar worldview: slightly jaded, fiercely independent ... "
― Douglas Kennedy , A Special Relationship
19 " Once you've crossed over into that realm of nothingness, your story only really stays in the minds of those closest to you. And when they too vanish... "
20 " We all end up ruing everything. It's the nature of this thing we call 'our condition.' Could, but didn't...Wanted to, but stopped myself...All the damn statements of regret we can never dodge. "
