Ten of My Favourite Alice McDermott Quotes
Quotes, who doesn’t love a good quote? This series of articles we look at Top 10 Famous Quotes by Author Alice McDermott, author quotes are always a challenge and fun to pick, with Alice McDermott you will find my Ten favourites of Alice McDermott’s quotes.
Popular Quotes
“We are surrounded by story.”
― Alice McDermott
“If you want to see how far we have not come from the cave and the woods, from the lonely and dangerous days of the prarie or the plain, witness the reaction of a modern suburban family, nearly ready for bed, when the doorbell rings or the door is rattled. They will stop where they stand, or sit bolt upright in their beds, as if a streak of pure lightning has passed through the house. Eyes wide, voices fearful, they will whisper to each other, “There’s someone at the door,” in a way that might make you believe they have always feared and anticipated this moment – that they have spent their lives being stalked.”
― Alice McDermott
“My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child’s need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly offered love, my parents’, my brother’s, even Tom’s, had failed to do. Love was required of me now–to be given, not merely to be sought and returned.”
― Alice McDermott, Someone
“The day and time itself: late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?”
― Alice McDermott
“The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we’re gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves, and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.”
― Alice McDermott
“It was not the future they’d been objecting to, but the loss of the past. As if it was his fault that you could now have one without the other”
― Alice McDermott, After This
“For one of us at least, we knew, we were certain – this is how we saw the world – there would never again be loneliness in life.”
― Alice McDermott, Someone
“I suppose I’ve never set out to write a novel in which nothing happens . . . only to write a novel about the lives of certain characters. That nothing ‘happens’ in their lives is beside the point to me; I’m still interested in how they live, and think, and speak, and make some sense of their own experience. Incident (in novels and in life) is momentary, and temporary, but the memory of an incident, the story told about it, the meaning it takes on or loses over time, is lifelong and fluid, and that’s what interests me and what I hope will prove interesting to readers. We’re deluged with stories of things that have happened, events, circumstances, actions, etc. We need some stories that reveal how we think and feel and hope and dream. ”
― Alice McDermott
“But Mrs. Meany, see, the women went on, leaning forward, despite how her heart was broken, pulled herself together, anyway, to put on a good face for the rest of the family at home. And she went back, Sunday after Sunday, right up until the Sunday before she died. Mrs. Meany put her beautiful love – a mother’s love – against the terrible scenes that brewed like sewage in that poor girl’s troubled mind. She persevered, she baked her cakes, she hauled herself (the goiter swinging) on and off the ferry, and she sat, brokenhearted, holding her daughter’s hand, even as Lucy shouted her terrible words, proving to anyone with eyes to see that a mother’s love was a beautiful, light, relentless thing that the devil could not diminish.”
― Alice McDermott, Someone
“Isn’t it funny how we all die at the same time? Always at the end of our lives. Why worry?”
― Alice McDermott, The Ninth Hour
10 Famous Quotes by Author Alice McDermott
So there you have it my Ten favourite quotes by Alice McDermott, please comment below and share your favourite quotes by the fantastic author Alice McDermott. Furthermore, if you find any Authors not covered for there, top 10 quotes let me know and I will review their works and find some of their best quotes as has been done here for Alice McDermott.
One Final Bonus – Alice McDermott Quote
“It might have been the first time in my life I understood what an easy bond it was, to share a neighborhood as we had done, to share a time past.”
― Alice McDermott, Someone
