Quotes from Susan Minot

He had made his decision. Later in life Ann would learn that when certain men made decisions no matter how much it might torture them afterwards they would stick with their decision. Men, she learned, would rather suffer than change their minds or their habits. They could develop elaborate systems for containing pain, sometimes so successful they would remain completely unaware of the vastness of the pain they possessed.

The past was speaking . . . what was the difference now? She had the feeling she'd walked into a house she thought she knew well and discovered a room she hadn't seen before. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe they did have a chance.

Where were you all this time? she said. Where have you been? I guess far away. Yes you were. Too far away. They sat in silence. You know you frightened me a little, she said. At the beginning. No. You did. He smiled at that. You looked as if you didnt anyone, she said. But this are the ones who need the most, he said. Don't you know that? I do know, she said. Too late.

When a person you love moves by you with flat eyes that will not see you, it is a shock to believe it.

For a girl, with each boy it's as though a petal gets plucked each time.

Unless you were high up in a building or happened to glimpse it at the end of one of the big avenues going east-west, all you knew of the sunset was a darkening in the air. No wonder people in New York were so unbalanced. They were totally untouched by the rhythms of nature. You were only aware of nature when something extreme happened, like a snowstorm or heatwave.

Her life had not been long enough for her to know the whole of herself, it had not been long enough or wide.

Tinhas ar de quem não precisava de ninguém, disse ela. Mas são esses os que mais precisam, retorquiu ele. Então não sabes disso? Agora já sei, disse ela. Tarde de mais. O saber nunca vem tarde de mais!, exclamou ele. Talvez não, respondeu ela. Mas pode vir tarde de mais para nos servir para alguma coisa.

A free spirit's just an idiot who doesn't want to face reality.

I learned that if you love a boy you are no longer free. The boy may become more important than your own self and if it is so, you will find trouble there. The first time you are hurt in your heart, you do not forget the lesson. It stays forever.

Later she would learn that a mistrust of one's senses was a normal reaction to situations like this. Though the body is alerted and absolutely certain about what is happening, the brain might try to find a way to reason out of it. Was there a word for disbelief in one's own sense.

It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn't true. It was only through other people that one ever did change.

She rolled herself back so she wouldn't leave anything out. Sometimes time spread out like ink in water but it also had an order and one thing could not come without the other coming first.

At banquets or by pools people would sit eating grapes and drinking from goblets and listen to the rhapsodes sing. It was not a song with music, but the rhapsodes still sang. They sang of heroes and of journeys.

Our concerns aren't always appropriate or morally elevated.

Writing an adaptation is not so much a collaboration as it is a series of steps. You're basically creating a blueprint for something else.

'Monkeys' is made up of nine short stories that tell an overall story. 'Folly' is a series of vignettes all put together to tell a larger story. In 'Lust and Other Stories,' there are nine stories - three, three, three; the beginnings of love, the middles, and the afters.

Longing, for everyone, is always there, isn't it? More intense at some times than others. You get closer to less longing - an odd metaphoric phrasing, I realize - then, you are further and longing more than ever again.

The idea that there is a family somewhere who functions is an odd concept.

People can have a variety of concerns at the same time. Even those undergoing grave or traumatic experiences will acknowledge the need for lightness or even entertainment.

Desire suppressed finds its way into other more surreal settings, into dreams.