Quotes from Anne Michaels

History is the love that enters us through death.

La propia ignorancia sigue creciendo precisamente al mismo ritmo que la propia experiencia.

Perhaps we painted on our own skin, with ochre and charcoal, long before we painted on stone.

History is amoral: events occurred. But memory is moral; what we consciously remember is what our conscience remembers.

I began the piling of words, to dig myself out to dare myself

The wet earth. I did not imagine your death would reconcile me with language, did not imagine soil clinging to the page, black type like birds on a stone sky. That your soul – yes, I use that word – beautiful, could saturate the bitterness from even that fate, not of love but its opposite, all concealed in a reversal of longing.

Sometimes I can't look you in the eye; you're like a building that's burned out inside, with the outer wall still standing.

Avery did not know what Jean was thinking, only that there was intense thought behind those eyes filled with tears. It was not only her weeping that moved him, but this intensity of thought he perceived in her. Already he knew that he did not want to tamper, to force open, to take what was not his; and that he was willing to wait for a long time for her to speak herself to him.

When you are alone -- at sea, in the polar dark -- an absence can keep you alive.

There's a precise moment when we reject contradiction. This moment of choice is the lie we will live by. What is dearest to us is often dearer to us than truth.

A place so empty it was not even haunted

The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened.

We must not forget what it means to be in love with another human being, Lucjan had said. For this, once lost, can no longer be imagined.

Write to save yourself ... and someday you'll write because you've been saved. You will feel terrible shame for this. Let your humility grow larger than your shame.

I could easily imagine carrying a favoured item to the ends of the earth, if only to help believe I'd see its beloved owner again.

I learned to tolerate images rising in me like bruises.

The tombstones smashed in Hebrew cemeteries and plundered for Polish sidewalks; today bored citizens, staring at their feet while waiting for a bus, can still read the inscriptions.

Somewhere a man answers courage with courage

All grief, anyone's grief...is the weight of a sleeping child.

Grief strikes where love struck first.

There was currant toast squishy with butter, caramel-marshmallow squares, strawberry boats oozing custard, chocolate exclairs that exploded with cream when the cats bit into them with their little white teeth and-- a special treat for Pleasant-- a pie made from thick slices of Bramley apple, with just the right amount of tangy in the tangy-sweet.

Sometimes, all you must do is reach out your hand for something wonderful to happen.

Write to save yourself,' Athos said, 'and someday you'll write because you've been saved.'" - from Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

the rain that held the light that fell, the rain that fell, the light that held