Quotes by Jane Hamilton

“It is a rule of nature that taking a day off on the farm sets a person back at least a week.”

“The easiest thing was a Web site. It just seemed the natural thing to do.”

“After about one hour of rain, the drainage ditch in the front of the house is so full it is halfway up the front yard. The backyard looks like a lake. We are on septic and every time it rains, you cannot use the bathroom facilities, and the smell of septic is very strong.”

“The big buzz at the Phoenix is about the possible radio station.”

“It was a gift. Theyre really community heroes. And theyre all musicians and have a love of music and understand what the Phoenix nurtures.”

“The main thing the Phoenix does is have an open-door afternoon program for teens to come and play music and do homework and skate and socialize, a place to be off the streets.”

“Its an incredible opportunity for the community and an incredible opportunity for young people. There are a lot of things to learn while implementing a radio station.”

“It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you cant do anything else, read all that you can.”

It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you cant do anything else, read all that you can.

I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident. I hadnt learned that it can happen so gradually you dont lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. You dont necessarily sense the motion. Ive found it takes at least two and generally three things to alter the course of a life: You slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling, for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of the heap.

She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.

...you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help... And then finally, the way through grief is grieving.

Life, he knew, had meaning and was fully possessed only as it was remembered and reshaped.

Wait. Walter went to the basket, taking what was a gray sleeve, drawing it out fro the middle of the heap. Oh, He said. He held the shapeless wool sweater to his chest. Joyce had knit for months the year Daniel died, and here was the result, her handiwork, the garment that would fit a giant. It was nothing more than twelve skeins of yarn and thousands of loops, but it had the power to bring back in a flash the green-tiled walls of the hospital, the sound of an ambulance trying to cut through city traffic in the distance, the breathing of the dying boy, his father staring at the ceiling, the full greasy bucket of fried chicken on he bed table. Ill take this one, Walter said, balling up the sweater as best he could, stuffing it into a shopping bag that was half full of the books he was taking home, that he was borrowing.Oh, honey, Joyce said. You dont want that old scrap.You made it. I remember your making it. Keep it light, he said to himself, thats a boy. Theres a use for it. Dont you think so, Aunt Jeannie? No offense, Mom, but I could invade the Huns with it or strap the sleeves to my car tires in a blizzard, for traction, or protect our nation with it out in space, a shield against nuclear attack.Jeannie tittered in her usual way in spite of herself. You always did have that sense of humor, she said as she went upstairs. When she was out of range, Joyce went to Walters bag and retrieved the sweater. She laid it on the card table, the long arms hanging down, and she fingered the stitches. Will you look at the mass of it, she exclaimed. I dont even recall making it.Memory -- that strange deceiver, Walter quoted.

...the others self, that enormous hulking thing each possessed, that a self of course is not inconsequential. p124

I have given up on speech with the Rev; there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help. My trust, even down in that dark place I carry, is that some person will come running. And then finally the way through grief is grieving.

He wondered if somewhere far off, defying the laws of science, Mitchs two screams were still echoing, if those vibrations had traveled into space, if they moved on and on like rays in a light-year. There might be other forms of life who were receiving the noise and trying to interpret the tones.

I didnt know how to tell him that I hadnt lost the instinct to survive and yet at the same time I didnt feel much need for self-preservation, that somehow there was a distinction between the two.

Sometimes I couldnt figure it out, what all the living was for.

He thought there must be a place, like a dead-letter office, where everyones longing went, yearning that was sent out, day after day. He thought it must collect somewhere, in a dank basement room, the mass of it rising and rising like water, and with no end in sight.