Quotes from Alice McDermott

Michael looked through the rolled-up window, across the long and empty parking lot to the dark green pines that seemed to be raising their arms to the wind, shaking spindly fists. His

There was another tear streaming down his windblown cheek and as he replied she lifted the handkerchief in her hand and wiped it away, feeling the not unpleasant pull of his beard against the thin cotton.

He was a broad-faced man who looked good in hats. Who

They frowned, looked to one another with shallow and delighted eyes, eyes that just skimmed over the surface of things without understanding.

He imagined paper napkins and paper cups, wax paper, cheese, wafers of white bread lifted by the wind, swirled about the car.

then they both turned away for a moment from the peppered wind. When

Their father took his hand from his shoulder. The wind rattled the windows, careful now. "Listen to that," their mother said. "It's really picking up." Above the pines, the sky had turned a deeper blue. In another minute, there would be rain. "We just might feel the brunt of this hurricane after all," their father said.

Mary Keane saw how the news made Michael pause, and then change his mind about rolling down the window. He lifted the paper cup from between his knees, took a drink of it. Annie said, "Really?" but it was Jacob who said, "Maybe we should go home," a crimp of fear in his voice. Her fault. She saw her husband flex his jaw. He did not love his oldest child as he should. There

She pushed open the door to the restaurant. More lunchtime bustle, mostly women in hats with their coats thrown over the backs of chairs, the satiny linings and the fur collars and cuffs, the perfume and the elegant curves of the women's backs as they leaned forward across the small tables, all giving the hint of a boudoir to the busy place. She

Once you learn to do it, you'll be expected to do it.

There was the ache in his heart, and now over his shoulder and down his arm, as

what?—the sky growing black, the wind moaning, the scrim of sand that blew across the empty lot forming itself into tooth and mouth and open jaw. "What are you afraid of?" More derisively than he'd meant it.

Who can know the heart of a man?

And then George approaching, his hand stuck to his hat and the hat bent into the onslaught. She

leaning over her stomach, over the baby's feet that were now—little acrobat—pressing themselves up against her breasts. She leaned over the curve of its back and spine as they pressed themselves into her stomach and bladder, leaned over the head that was now pressing itself down toward the worn upholstery of the old car, sensing, perhaps, that its watery world was a tributary after all, not a pool. She

Where are you headed, George?" she asked him. He shouted something unintelligible into the wind. "Have you eaten yet?" she

John Keane pressed his chest to the steering wheel as he put the key in the ignition, taking a deep breath as he did, hoping the change of movement would ease the growing pain. The

Why not?" but without conviction, confirming for them both that this was a sudden impulse that most likely would not last out the afternoon. "What if I come by at seven?" he said.

The windshield wipers were like a new beat in the day's rhythm. Mary

Her husband put his arm across the back of the seat. "Everybody set to go?" he said. He had been too harsh with Michael, too derisive of Jacob, and who knew what his daughter needed, looking up at him, the bear in her arms. "I'm ready," she said, primly, the first to respond. The apple of his eye.

Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.

I have a great fondness for the liars in my stories.

Most of the characters I write with don't think an awful lot about their faith. They're not always questioning the church or feeling confined by the church or rebelling against the church.

Family dynamics are true over time, across generations and different cultures.