Quotes from Jane Hamilton

Sometimes people choose one person in a crowd to pick at. It makes them feel better to say how there's one entirely rotten person they can blame everything on.

I used to think that love was simple and noticeable, like rain falling, so that just as you'd look at your skin and say Water, you would also wake in the morning and say Love. But it has been underneath, this new and old thing I feel, subterranean, silent and steady, like blood, rushing along and along without often making itself known.

It was probably middle-aged of me, to understand that sometimes there is nothing of any use to say.

The two or so times we actually fought she smashed a plate and stormed out into the night. I have always disliked an argument. When I tried to be the voice of reason, when I pointed out that it might be wiser to continue what I mildly referred to as, "the discussion," she flew off the handle again. Later, in jest, she accused me of being more even and mature than any reasonable person could tolerate.

Life, he knew, had meaning and was fully possessed only as it was remembered and reshaped.

The law of thermodynamics, you know, the idea that nothing is lost, that a loss in one area equals a gain in the other, was actually not invented by scientists but by the people who write redemptive fiction. [...] Actually, in real life, we lose things all the time and they're gone. Lost, period.

For me God was something within that allowed me, occasionally, to see.

He thought there must be a place, like a dead-letter office, where everyone's longing went, yearning that was sent out, day after day. He thought it must collect somewhere, in a dank basement room, the mass of it rising and rising like water, and with no end in sight.

However, Mr. Darcy was the man I truly admired. I see him clearly. He is exceptionally tall, and his head is covered with black curly hair. He looks serious except when he smiles at you; it knocks you right straight across the room. His smile is that brilliant. He doesn't ever do anything to hurt girls. I longed for him to walk out of his book and reach for my hand.

We are part of each other's live in much the same way a lover is only slightly beneath closed lids in sleep.

there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help. My trust, even down in that dark place I carry, is that some person will come running. And then finally the way through grief is grieving, rolling over so the tears can drip out of your ears and settling in for a long sleep.

I didn't know how to tell him that I hadn't lost the instinct to survive and yet at the same time I didn't feel much need for self-preservation, that somehow there was a distinction between the two.

I have always thought that work is as common and fine as air, something that we become a part of. I am drawn to the out of doors, to the ordinary pleasures of everyday work. Alice used to say that if I was a bird I'd be the first one to sing, the wayward robin who's cranking it up before a ray of light gives anyone allowance.

I don't know what materials scientists put in bombs but it seems as if they wouldn't need anything more than two personalities who don't get along so wonderfully.

There is nothing like lying down to bawl and choke, and then rolling over so the tears can drip out of your ears and settling in for a long sleep.

She noticed the sun going down, and for once she looked at the sky. She stopped and mentioned to herself how blue it was, how if you could reach up and taste the color of dusk you might turn into something shimmering and silver; you might be transformed into the moon itself.

He half believed [...] that love was capable of killing a person, and that even a worm, digesting the particularly bitter juices, could distinguish a dead corpse from love.

I experienced unrequited love early.

I don't mean it to sound egomaniacal, but in a way, for me, it was very useful to imagine that I was the only one who was taking pen in hand. I'd always been told that it was impossible to be published, so I was writing only for myself.

I'm really glad I had those years working on the orchard alongside my husband.

I've always broken out in hives when I go into any organized religious situation.

I grew up studying dance, taking ballet lessons.

In high school, it was very fashionable to be disdainful of the bourgeois suburbs, but I secretly liked them.

I think we're all more alike than we want to believe sometimes.