Quotes from Wally Lamb

All the dead bolts and pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.

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.

People waste their happiness...Everyone's so scared to be happy.

Love was always the thing that did that-smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt.

I'd expected her house to have a phosphorescent, lava-light atmosphere, but she had mother-of-pearl Formica and café curtains with pom-poms. A little girl with rashy cheeks and big eyebrows like Nadine's sat in a playpen by the stove, chewing on an empty Saltines box.

Making the decision to have a child—it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.

feels good no matter what

The key to serenity is forgiveness.

I understand there was some controversy about the coroner's ruling concerning Josephus Jones's

For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands.

AFTER I DELIVERED VELVET BACK to the farmhouse that night, I entered the condo and walked over to my Minotauromachia. And as I stood before it, it was crystal clear to me that the terrible monster was doomed in the face of the powerful little girl.

Does not the New Testament exhort us to extend a hand to one who has fallen? Professor Sumner would have us place a foot on the fallen one as he lies prone and pitiable, the better to remain his superior.

The key to peace within my soul, he said, was to cast aside my bitterness and resentment

But he'd become impatient with the way people wasted their lives, squandered their chances like paychecks.

Ma bent over and kissed Grandma, who sat ramrod straight in her chair and didn't respond. "Don't wait up for me, now," Ma laughed. "Do-on't worry," Grandma answered, rolling her eyes at the TV.

Maybe that's what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try new things but still makes you feel safe.

I celebrate art that shakes complacency by the shoulders and shouts, 'Wake up!

He took his hamburger out of the box, bit a large crescent shape out of it, and chewed. I looked away. "I've been thinking," he said. "Our apartment lease is up in less than three months. What do you say we move down to your grandmother's house." "I've been thinking, too," I said. "In a way, you raped her." "What?" "Your high school girlfriend. Sheila. You raped her.

He sat on the rug and shouted correct answers to the contestants. His wild hair blocked off a corner of the screen. "You're pretty smart," I said during a commercial. "And you thought all I could do was hang wallpaper." He laughed. "You're just catching me during one of my fallow periods, that's all. One of my compost years. I'm expecting a creative leap pretty soon now.

And would you three like peanuts, pretzels, or Biscoff cookies with those?

The center of activity on Pierce Street was Connie's Superette, a little market housed on the bottom floor of a large, asbestos-shingled apartment building. Connie, a fat woman with Lucille Ball red hair, sat behind the counter on a webbed porch chair. She kept a whirring electric fan trained on herself and was careful not to risk breaking her two-inch fingernails as she grudgingly rang up people's stuff.

We buried my husband, Claude, today, finally. Me and Belinda Jean. His emphysema took him nine days ago, but the wake and funeral had to be put off because of the flood. McPadden's Funeral Parlor was in the water's path.

Life is messy, violent, confusing, and hopeful.

chasm between