Quotes from Andre Dubus III

Regret was Fear's big sister

it seemed almost inconceivable that in his short marriage to Althea she had, in her quiet way, left him feeling not only worthy, but exceptional, a man not only capable of being a real poet, but a husband and father too.

Soraya-joon, I have done all that I could. Do not be sorry for us. Your mother and I await you upon your return. We love you more than we have loved life. After your dear brother name your first son. Live here if you like, but if you sell it take no less than one hundred thousand dollars. ~Bawbaw

Then she turned on him in a hundred small ways, each of them minor and not unusual when one human being lived with another, but this was like saying that a typhoon was nothing more than single drops of rain pushed by a little wind.

if there is no feet at your feet, do not lift rocks at the side of the road.

It's easy K. on one side of the page you got your costs and on the other side your benefits. All you do is mark which one is which, then you weigh one side against the other and you get your decision just like that. that's all you ever have to do. i live by this." "But what if you don't know the difference between a benefit and a cost? what if you've never been very good at telling a plus from a minus?

He tried to remember her ever being this way before. In her voice--almost overexuberant--was not simply holiday cheer but joyous relief, like some terminally ill patient who's just been told she's not sick anymore.

I feel so much I hardly feel anything at all.

When I thought of the word "man," I could only think of those who could defend themselves and those they loved.

But I'd run two miles and when I stepped inside our cool, dark house, I yelled up the stairs to Mom, "I ran two miles with Daddy, Mom! I'm strong! I'm strong!" And I punched the wall and could feel the plaster and lath behind the wallpaper, though I had no words for them.

Coming?" Dennis held his arm out for her, a patient smile in his voice. She peered up at him, but he was just a tall, blurry shadow. There was talk and laughter and music coming from inside the house. Above it the stars were in a black sky. That black, black sky. "You all right?" All those stars so far apart. None of them close. From far away they just looked it.

Different people carry different toolboxes.

I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, its self-consciousness. And if you have one eye on the mirror to see how you're doing, you're not doing it as well as you can. Don't think about publishing, don't think about editors, don't think about marketplace.

If you don't put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There's the writer and there's the author. The author - you don't ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care - easier said than done.

Pop, I said, isn't this shit vaulable? Not to me, son.

I blinked and looked around my tiny rented kitchen, saw things I'd never seen before: the stove leaning to the left, the handle of the fridge covered with dirty masking tape, the chipped paint of the window casing, a missing square of linoleum on the floor under the radiator. I stood and closed the notebook. I picked up the pencil and set it on top like some kind of marker, a reminder to me of something important I shouldn't lose.

beach houses along short sandy streets. He can feel her bare forarm brushing his, and it's strange she's being so quiet. He glances down at her and she smiles up at him as if, in his silence, he's been telling a long story and she is simply listening to it.

It's been six months, Nancy.' 'What's your hurry? It took me a year to get used to living with Carl. I mean, what do men do anyway? They work, eat, drink, and play games. Sex for them is in the sports and recreation category. You can't live with a man and not be lonely.' 'You think so?' 'Absolutely. Besides, once you have kids, it all changes anyway. Everything seems to make sense then.

But when he sat on the bed beside me, then leaned over and kissed my forehead, my cheek, my lips, his hand pressed to my rib cage, the other stroking my hair back, it was like I was an empty well and didn't know it until just now when he uncovered me and it started to rain.

What did he think? That time moved forward? No, for the good times it slipped out of your hands like water, but when things went wrong time stopped. It stopped and stared at you and never took its eyes away from what you'd done. I hope they hurt you in there. If you come looking for Susan, you will be sorry.

For there is so much she needs to pass on to this child, that our lives are brief, even long ones like hers, and the one thing we should do is take care of each other. That's all. But honey, it's so hard. Why, child, is it so hard? A voice through the trees.

She was speaking again, her voice like the chirp of a bird who has flown into a black tunnel but does not yet know it.

Letting go of the pipe in the laundry room, he could feel in his throat so many sentences from the night's reading of emails, and he needed to shout them at her now as she poured her coffee in the kitchen, its smell always such a comfort to him, but not then; that morning it was like the sweet fragrance of lilacs just before you see the corpse upon which they lie.

But beneath them all, at the very bottom of the stack, is a worn and slightly tattered magazine called African Mamas Sucking Hog. I flip through it real quick; a bunch of young black girls dressed like Kenyans giving fat-ass bikers blow jobs. I smile at this; Elroy the scholar. Elroy the sicko masturbator.