Quotes from Wally Lamb

The world is made of stairs; some go up and some go down. . . .

I kept changing the station, over and over around the dial, but all I got were those two channels, or snow. I had spent half my life watching TV. I thought again about the paperweight. I'd had it less than a week when I shook too hard and accidentally sent it flying across my bedroom where it hit the floor and cracked. Leaked, became useless. At the time, it was my biggest tragedy—breaking that paperweight.

I'll give you what I learned from all this," he said. "Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

There are speckles of paint in his hair and ears and eyebrows, but the mask has protected the rest of his face. I look away when his clean mouth talks.

that we need to be charitable to one another because it's the right thing to do, "not because it allows us to rack up mileage points for our trip to some imaginary heaven.

announcer's unchecked joy.

People waste their happiness—that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.

He sat down on one of the pilings looking sick and sad and I knew he was thinking about Ma and the baby. I wanted badly to cheer him up but singing commercials seemed the wrong thing to do.

I'm glad you're seeing someone," she said. "You and Thomas had a pretty complex relationship. You've spent an enormous amount of emotional energy on Thomas. Your whole life. Now, you're going to have to take all of that energy and . . . reinvest it, I guess. It's bound to be a complicated process.

Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past - connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially.

Forgiveness is the rich loam from which love can grow.

I was watching how we'd filled the room with floating smoke, how our slightest movements stirred it. I was back at our old house on Carter Avenue, the night Daddy threw the barbell and Ma soaked herself in the tub, smoking, her brown nipples half in, half out of the water.

Shiva represents the reproductive power of destruction. The power of renovation. Which is why he's here in this room, where we dismantle and rebuild.

Getting your head shrunk could only take you so far, and then it came time to drop to your knees and humble yourself. Ask forgiveness of God the Father. Or, in my case, God the Stepfather. And, goddamnit, my knees just didn't seem to bend that way.

I don't begrudge the kids their hormones or their illusions of immortality.

Change what you can, accept what you can't, and be smart enough to know the difference. Viveca comes downstairs first and heads into the

Evenings after the dishes, Grandma hobbled around the house with her frayed prayer book which was held together with rubber bands. Then she'd settle in front of the television to watch her westerns—"Bonanza," "Rawhide"—while I sat out at the kitchen signing corny get-well cards to Ma and pages of complaints to Jeanette.

The Peacock Tattoo Emporium's waiting area was a row of kitchen chairs, standing ashtrays, dirty magazines. You could pick the tattoo you wanted from a fat loose-leaf with plastic-covered sample illustrations. "They're both crazy," I told Roberta, looking out the plate glass to make sure my grandmother couldn't see me. "Ma and Grandma. They're just crazy in different ways.

Your children are not your children,'" he said. "'They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.'" "What's that supposed to mean?" I lit another Doral. "It's from The Prophet. Kahlil Gibran.

Well, how about the Lennon Sisters then? They can't be much older than you are." I lied and told her one of her precious Lennon sisters—Diane, the oldest, her favorite—was having an illegitimate baby. "Pfft," she said, flicking away the possibility with the flap of her wrist. But her lip quivered and she left my room making the sign of the cross.

Maybe you inherited craziness like you did brown eyes or frizzy hair, I thought. Maybe you just went nuts and did that sort of thing if your mother got a divorce and a new boyfriend.

Prophet. Kahlil Gibran.

Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance.

father's command is a son's law!