Quotes from Gail Caldwell

All of this seems as though it were yesterday, or forever ago, in that crevasse between space and time that stays fixed in the imagination. I remember it all because I remember it all. In crisis with someone you love, the dialogue is as burnished as a scar on a tree.

The other thing I know now, is that we survive grief merely and surely by outlasting it. The ongoing fact of the narrative eclipses the heartbreak within. A deal that seems to be the price we pay for getting to hold on to our beloved dead.

Give me back what should already be mine. Give me the dark, the freedom of the streets, the right to walk wherever I want, unafraid of rape or assault or just being messed with. The stars belong to me as much as you. Move over. Make room on the bench.

The real trick is to let life, with all it's ordinary missteps and regrets, be consistently more mysterious and alluring then it's end.

This was a hard-won but brilliant education: I had realized, as life is always willing to instruct, that the world as we see it is only the published version. The subterranean realms, whether churches or hospital rooms or smoke-filled basements, are part of what holds up the rest. The realized life versus the external picture of it: the assumption and projections that we all make about other people's lives.

gregarious hermit. I wanted the warmth of spontaneous connection and the freedom to be left alone.

When I wept and told him I was afraid I was too intense, too much, he interrupted my tears and said, "If someone came down from above and told me I could keep only one thing about you, it would be your too-muchness.

It is always hard to leave a home a drama a way of life a life. So I sat there warm and safe that night held by the sea and a good man and my own good fortune victim and witness to all the transitory sweetness like Gatsby's dreams that stood before and behind me.

That sometimes the smartest person in the room is the one who says, "I have no idea.

she made me laugh like I hadn't laughed in a long time. We were like puppies playing together on the beach. I thought,

Pain is what yields the solution.

In crisis, I circled my wagons, more afraid of being disappointed by someone than going it alone.

On my better days, I could feel free and tough and proud of myself; on the bad ones, I was alone as hell.

Real change, though, is forgiving enough to take a little failure, strong enough to take despair in small doses.

the world as we see it is only the published version. The subterranean realms, whether churches or hospital rooms or smoke-filled basements, are part of what hold up the rest.

You got sober. You started work at the Globe. You started therapy. You got Clementine" (my first Samoyed). Here she gave me the side-eye and smiled. "And me, I might add.

I think solitude chose me.

If writers possess a common temperament, it's that they tend to be shy egomaniacs; publicity is the spotlight they suffer for the recognition they crave.

and art instead of God, she often complained that she'd

Finding Caroline was like placing a personal ad for an imaginary friend, then having her show up at your door funnier and better than you had conceived. Apart, we had each been frightened drunks and aspiring writers and dog lovers; together, we became a small corporation.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. —GEORGE ELIOT, Scenes of Clerical Life

In all the free falls of one's life, there are moments that stand out as a hand reaching across the abyss, and this, for me, was one of them.

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days. The real trick is to let life, with all its ordinary missteps and regrets, be consistently more mysterious and alluring than its end.

The heart breaks open.