Quotes by Andre Dubus

“Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.”

“House of Sand and Fog,”

“House of Sand and Fog ... I suffer from migraines and when she curled up in the bathtub... I felt her pain. Also, Ive met people from Iran and felt connected to their culture in the authors descriptions.”

“Berg writes with humor and a big heart about resilience, loneliness, love, and hope. And the transcendence that redeems.”

A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth.

What cracks had he left in their hearts? Did they love less now and settle for less in return, as they held onto parts of themselves they did not want to give and lose again? Or - and he wished this - did they love more fully because they had survived pain, so no longer feared it?

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment. What creates despair is the imagination, which pretends there is a future, and insists on predicting millions of moments, thousands of days, and so drains you that you cannot live the moment at hand. (A Fathers Story)

There’s something about taking the cart back instead of leaving it in the parking lot…It’s significant…Because somebody has to take them in…And if you know that, and you do it for that one guy, you do something else. You join the world…You move out of your isolation and become universal.

Don’t quit. It’s very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it’s very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can’t get fired if you don’t write, and most of the time you don’t get rewarded if you do. But don’t quit.

Dont quit. Its very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and its very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You cant get fired if you dont write, and most of the time you dont get rewarded if you do. But dont quit.

Talent is cheap. What matters is discipline.

“A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth.”