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Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant QUOTES

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant QUOTES

1 " Ah, God, it's barbaric, however you look at it,' he told Ruth.
'What, cremation?' she asked.
'Death. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

2 " There ought to be a while separate language, she thought, for words that are truer than other words - for perfect, absolute truth. It was the purest fact of her life: she did not understand him, and she never would. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

3 " I'm falling into disrepair "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

4 " Everything,' his father said, 'comes down to time in the end--to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't sadness wishing time back again? Even big things--even mourning a death: aren't you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos--ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? ... Isn't it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

5 " When you have children, you're obligated to live. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

6 " ...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

7 " He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

8 " She remembered the feel of wind on summer nights - how it billows through the house and wafts the curtains and smells of tar and roses "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

9 " ...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

10 " You think we're a family,' Cody said, turning back. 'You think we're some jolly, situation-comedy family when we're in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

11 " dying, you don't get to see how it all turns out. Questions you have asked will go unanswered forever. Will this one of my children settle down? Will that one learn to be happier? Will I ever discover what was meant by such-and-such? "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

12 " Cody cut into a huge wedge of pie and gave some thought to food--to its inexplicable, loaded meaning in other people's lives. Couldn't you classify a person, he wondered, purely by examining his attitude toward food? "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

13 " When you come [to a baseball game] in person, you direct your own focus, you know? The TV or the radio men, they might focus on the pitcher when you want to see what first base is doing; and you don't have any choice but to accept it. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

14 " It was funny, in her old age, to look back and see for how short a period her nest had NOT been empty. Relatively speaking, it was nothing - empty far longer than full. so much of herself had been invested in those children; who could believe how briefly they'd been with her. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

15 " Always have a purpose,' his father used to tell him. 'Act like you're heading someplace purposeful, and none of the low-life will mess with you.' He had also said, 'Never trust a man who starts his sentences with "Frankly,"' and 'Nine tenths of a good sidearm pitch is in the flick of the wrist,' and 'If you want to sell a person something, look off elsewhere as you're speaking, not straight into his eyes. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

16 " انت تصدقنى، أليس كذلك؟ فأنا لست عمياء. اعرف متى اكون غير معقولة. احيانا اقف
خارج نفسى وأراقب كل شىء، منفصلة تماما. اقول لنفسى "توقفى الان" ، لكن الامر يبدو كما لو كنت... اتيه عجبا بنفسى، على ان اهاجم، ان اواصل. افكر، "اجل، اجل،سأتوقف، فقط لأقل شيئا واحدا اخر، مجرد هذا الشىء الواحد الاخر..."
صفحة 214 "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

17 " He thought of how it would be if his father returned some time in he future, when Cody was a man. "Look at what I've accomplished," Cody would tell him. "Notice where I've got to, how far I've come without you." Was it something I said? Was it something I did? Was it something I didn't do, that made you go away? "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

18 " I’m worried if I come too close, they’ll say I’m overstepping. They’ll say I’m pushy, or … emotional, you know. But if I back off, they might think I don’t care. I really, honestly believe I missed some rule that everyone else takes for granted; I must have been absent from school that day. There’s this narrow little dividing line I somehow never located. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

19 " Their growing up amounted, therefore, to a gradual dimming of the light at her bedroom door, as if they took some radiance with them as they moved away from her. She should have planned for it better, she sometimes thought. She should have made a few friends or joined a club. But she wasn’t the type. It wouldn’t have consoled her. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

20 " The child didn't wake. She only nestled closer and sighed. So after all, Ezra could have put his coat beneath her head. He had missed an opportunity. It was like missing a train - or something more important, something that would never come again. There was no explanation for the grief that suddenly filled him. "

― Anne Tyler , Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant