Who Is Maud Dixon? QUOTES

2 " You shouldn’t have to TRY to like things . . . It’s like people who force themselves to finish a book they’re not enjoying. Just close it! Go find another story! "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?

4 " voracious reader, and it dawned on her that a corporate job in Tampa or Jacksonville was not, in fact, the be-all and end-all. Something lay beyond that point. Florence had haunted the library, desperate for glimpses of lives unlike her own. She had a penchant for stories about glamorous, doomed women like Anna Karenina and Isabel Archer. Soon, however, her fascination shifted from the women in the stories to the women who wrote them. She devoured the diaries of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, who were far more glamorous and doomed than any of their characters. But without a doubt, Florence’s Bible was Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Admittedly, she spent more time scrolling through photos of Joan Didion in her sunglasses and Corvette Stingray than actually reading her, but the lesson stuck. All she had to do was become a writer, and her alienation would magically transform into evidence of brilliance rather than a source of shame. When she looked into the future, she saw herself at a beautiful desk next to a window, typing her next great book. She could never quite see the words on the screen, but she knew they were brilliant and would prove once and for all that she was special. Everyone would know the name Florence Darrow. And who’d trade that for a condo? "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?

6 " Florence’s mother liked to imagine a life of diamonds and gilt for her daughter. But this, this, was the life Florence wanted. A blue-and-white teacup stuffed with clementine peels. A tangle of white ranunculus in a ceramic pitcher on the windowsill. Amanda had once put a vase of those same flowers on her desk at work. The whole place looked like a painting by Vermeer. And it was cold. Chilly gusts rattled the windows in their frames. Someone had told Florence once that glass was actually a liquid that settled slowly, over eons; that was why in old houses the windows were always thicker at the bottom than at the top. Was that true? Florence didn’t care. In the same way she couldn’t understand why people were so determined to expose Maud Dixon’s identity, she couldn’t understand why they needed to pin things down, turn poetry into fact. Wasn’t poetry better? Why would you turn something beautiful into something quotidian? "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?

8 " If I mess up, I mess up. I find that people in general are way too scared of making mistakes. Sure, make a plan and do some research, but when it’s time to act, my god, just act. "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?

10 " Doesn’t it bother you that no one knows it’s you?” Florence asked when she could no longer resist. “That you wrote Mississippi Foxtrot?” “Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” Florence nodded then said, “Sorry, what?” “It’s Latin, from Ovid. It means, ‘He lives well who is well hidden. "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?

12 " There was a world beyond her world, Florence knew, that was entirely foreign to her. Every once in a while, someone took this other world in their hands and rattled it, dislodging a small piece that fell at her feet with a plink. She gathered up these fragments like an entomologist gathers rare bugs to pin to a board. "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?

14 " I can barely muster up enough empathy to cover the humans I know. Every day we’re asked to feel sorry for refugees from Syria and gay men in Chechnya and Muslims in Myanmar. It’s too much. The human mind wasn’t built to assimilate so much suffering. It was designed to produce just enough empathy to cover its own little community. So please don’t ask me to expend my dwindling reserves on an owl. "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?

16 " Florence downed the rest of her drink and went to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. There were two spigots, one for hot water and one for cold. She held her hand under the hot one until she couldn’t bear it anymore. She’d discovered in college that this particular ritual was the best remedy for anger and despair. "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?

18 " Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” Florence nodded then said, “Sorry, what?” “It’s Latin, from Ovid. It means, ‘He lives well who is well hidden. "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?

20 " He had touched her tenderly, accommodatingly, in a way she found slightly revolting. "

― , Who Is Maud Dixon?