Quotes from Edith Pearlman

I wrote in the cellar for a number of years. I needed a private space, and it had a furnace, so it was always warm.

Murder, arson, adultery, drugging and drinking, cruel politics--reading a book crammed with such activities can make the timid and yearning among us feel like the happiest people in the world.

Architecture is undistinguished, sometimes derelict, but occasionally, as in 'Post and Beam,' there is something arresting in a setting... the building behind the Cathedral.

I lived around the corner from Saul Bellow.

I know a lot of single people who are not miserable as society tells them they're supposed to be.

The natural world is often bleak, but the language devoted to it is as careful as needlepoint and prophetic as well.

Still she wondered: did the present deliver up the future, or must you chase your destiny like a harpoonist?

He gave her that last word. He gave her his love. He would think of her almost every day for the rest of his life. Only his presence would he withhold.

I believe solitude to be not only the unavoidable human condition but also the sensible human preference." ? Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories, (from "Mates")

But you said the words you knew, which were not always the ones you meant.

What a rich phrase. You could live a life on the income it yielded.

What counted was how you behaved while death let you live, and how you met death when life released you.

It was as if she had once been almost smothered and then allowed to live only if she limited her vocabulary and breathed hardly at all.

I wanted to publish a book simply to be buried with it; that's all I wanted. I had no ambition beyond that.

In the late 1950s, self-esteem hadn't yet been invented. High schools saw their sole mission as preparing students thoroughly for academic work.

I was quite satisfied with my creative life. I've always had reinforcement from a small but devoted readership.

Tony Judt's remarkable 'The Memory Chalet' was written from the prison of mute immobility.

I think the computer is a hindrance to good writing because it is so tempting to leave what you've written. If you use a typewriter, you must retype if you make a mistake, and thus, you must re-examine every word.

I have a skepticism toward romance. I believe that decency and companionship are, in the long run, more important in life.

There's no rule I want to break or ever wanted to break - I find the conventional life gratifying - as long as I can sit at my typewriter, alone, for half a day.

The market town of Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, was a popular 19th - century English spa. Its mineral springs were supposed to be good for you. This was before the invention of bran. In the 20th century, Cheltenham grew into an active municipality.

All the stories I write come from someone I've met or some anecdote I've heard.

The ordinary experiences of aging alter and clarify your view of past, present, and future.

I always loved to read, and I wanted to be part of the project of literature. My physical longevity is due to luck, and my literary longevity is due to my physical longevity.