Quotes from Wally Lamb

I was on the brown plaid sofa, watching TV and Scotch-taping my bangs to my forehead because Jeanette said that kept them from drying frizzy. Across the room on the Barcalounger, my mother was having her nervous breakdown.

It could probably qualify as an epidemic among American men: this stubborn reluctance to embrace our wholeness, this stoic denial that we had come from our mothers as well as our fathers. It was sad, really-tragic. So wasteful of human lives, as our wars and drive-by shootings kept proving to us; all one had to do was turn on CNN or CBS News. And yet, it was comic, too—the lengths most men went to to prove that they were tough guys.

Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words.

I work hard, do my best and send it out to the world hoping that people can relate to it. I accept any reaction and hope they think it is worth reading.

The point is this: that the stream of memory may lead you to the river of understanding. And understanding, in turn, may be a tributary to the river of forgiveness.