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The Friend QUOTES

The Friend QUOTES

1 " What we miss - what we lose and what we mourn - isn't it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are. To say nothing of what we wanted in life but never got to have. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

2 " Tempted to put too much faith in the great male mind, remember this: It looked at cats and declared them gods. It looked at women and asked, Are they human? And, once that nut had been cracked: But do they have souls? "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

3 " Consider rereading, how risky it is, especially when the book is one that you loved. Always the chance that it won't hold up, that you might, for whatever reason, not love it as much. When this happens, and to me it happens all the time (and more and more as I get older), the effect is so disheartening that I now open old favorites warily. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

4 " Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I'll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

5 " Once again I come upon his famous definition of love: two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

6 " You can't hurry love, as the song goes. You can't hurry grief either. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

7 " In a book I am reading the author talks about word people versus fist people. As if words could not also be fists. Aren't often fists. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

8 " If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told that it does, it appears that writing takes some away. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

9 " Sure I worried that writing about it might be a mistake. You write a thing down because you're hoping to get a hold on it. You write about experiences partly to understand what they mean, partly not to lose them to time. To oblivion. But there's always the danger of the opposite happening. Losing the memory of the experience itself to the memory of writing about it. Like people whose memories of places they've traveled to are in fact only memories of the pictures they took there. In the end, writing and photography probably destroy more of the past than they ever preserve of it. So it could happen: by writing about someone lost - or even just talking too much about them - you might be burying them for good. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

10 " What we miss - what we lose and what we mourn - isn’t it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are. To say nothing of what we wanted in life but never got to have. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

11 " I know this is all moronically anthropomorphic, but sometimes that is the form love takes. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

12 " There's a certain type of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something bad happen to the dog? "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

13 " Here is what I learned: Simone Weil was right. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

14 " He has to forget you. He has to forget you and fall in love with me. That's what has to happen. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

15 " Strays is what a writer I recently read calls those who, for one reason or another, and despite whatever they might have wanted earlier in life, never really become a part of life, not in the way most people do. They may have serious relationships, they may have friends, even a sizable circle, they may spend large portions of their time in the company of others. But they never marry and they never have children. On holidays, they join some family or other group. This goes on year after year, until they finally find it in themselves to admit that they'd really rather just stay home. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

16 " The poet Rilke once reported seeing a dying dog give its mistress a look full of reproach. Later, he gave this experience to the narrator of a novel: He was convinced I could have prevented it. It was now clear that he had always overrated me. And there was no time left to explain it to him. He continued to gaze at me, surprised and solitary, until it was over. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

17 " Because it’s all about the rhythm, you said. Good sentences start with a beat. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

18 " A pause here to confess, not without shame: I never heard the news that you'd fallen in love without experiencing a pang, nor could I suppress a surge of joy each time I heard that you were breaking up with someone. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

19 " Whenever he saw his books in a store, he felt like he’d gotten away with something, said John Updike. Who also expressed the opinion that a nice person wouldn’t become a writer. The problem of self-doubt. The problem of shame. The problem of self-loathing. You once put it like this: When I get so fed up with something I’m writing that I decide to quit, and then, later, I find myself irresistibly drawn back to it, I always think: Like a dog to its vomit. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend

20 " What we miss—what we lose and what we mourn—isn’t it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are. To say nothing of what we wanted in life but never got to have. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend