Quotes from Douglas Kennedy

All lives are extraordinary. All lives are simultaneously banal and obvious.

The lure of safety drags us into lives we'd prefer to dodge.

Money. The trickiest substance in life--as it's the way we keep score, measure our worth, and think we can control our destinies. Money: the essential lie.

the perennial outsider with his nose to the window, looking in on a world from which he felt excluded.

biggest roadblocks you encounter in life are the ones you construct for yourself.

We're all so preposterous, aren't we. Holding onto our traumas, our agonies, our small dramas and using them to sabotage that which we so want, and actually deserve. ' (Petra Dussman in 'The Moment')

Another curious thing about the slow progression out of depression: you begin to crave routine.

But can you ever excise a bad parent? Though you might come to terms with all that they have psychologically bequeathed you, they can never really be expunged. They're the stubborn, permanent stain that will never entirely vanish in the wash.

We all want to fix things. Just as we all believe that so much in life can be rectified. Mend fences, build bridges, reach out, engage in mutual healing.

I could hear him swallowing hard, trying not to cry. Why is it that we always try to be brave at moments when bravery is futile?

There are moments when you think you will cry forever. You never do. Eventually, sheer physical exhaustion forces you to stop, to settle, to becalm yourself amidst all the mad turbulence of bereavement.

When it comes to women, men only hear what they want to hear. It's one of the many failures of their sex.

You only begin to grasp the import of an event – and its larger implications vis-à-vis your life – long after it has entered into that realm marked 'memory'.

If there is an abiding theme in 'The Pursuit of Happiness,' it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people's past histories.

Words matter, words have import.

We don't like admitting this, but it is a key component of human existence: the fact that life has the potential for things both wondrous and horrific.

We all want to fix things. Just as we all believe that so much in life can be rectified. Mend fences, build bridges, reach out, engage in mutual healing.

The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio.

From Graham Greene, I learnt how to be an accessible writer who grapples with our doubts as sentient individuals.

Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us.

With a novel, no matter where I am in it, I'm fretting about it. Every time I write a book, it starts with great forward momentum. Then there seems to be a period where it slows down a bit, and other things intervene. Then I gain momentum.

I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work.