Quotes from Haven Kimmel

Writing a book brings a single, irreducible truth right out to the edges of a person: there is no place to be, there is no place in this world, it is impossible to be happy.

Dana's house could have been cut from a magazine, the kind of home that tells a story, even though no one lives in it.

What, exactly, are you doing?" "Dog-sitting." "Dog-sitting. Are all of your colleagues going out of town at the same time?" My mom was patient as a saint, but she said the word colleague as if it were coated with the oil drained off a can of tuna fish.

One chance--that's what she had seen she had--one flying leap that was really composed of eight thousand separate possibilities for falling, and she had taken that chance and come this far and been found out.

There are people in this world so perfect that the fact of them feels like a personal gift

I patted her on the arm, indulgently. My mother's delicacy was a part of her character she had adamantly clung to over the years, even as her occupation of not moving from the couch softened her and made her, well, motherly. I once heard her tell a friend that she was, in fact, a 120-pound woman, but she kept herself wrapped in fat in order to prevent bruising.

There are people in this world so perfect that the fact of them seems like a personal gift.

Cassie got in her truck.She didnt own much , but it was all there with her.A vintage Balabushka pool cue won fair & square; a backpackfrom a Boy Scout packed with Laura,s letters.a phone number in Biloxi.Her tools ,her boots ,her clothes,some books;she had a .22 pistol ,a Ruger Single-Six,strapped to her ankle.She had three hundred thousand in cash in a metal box behind her seat . She drove away .

I was born an outcast in an ancient and subtle way; I was conceived out of some grief or darkness and would be made to pay a price for it.

I've come to believe the marriage vows should include, in the 'Will you love him, honor him, etc.' section, a simple question: 'Will you love him when he stands in the way of your heart's deepest desire?' or 'Will you love him when the fact of him absolutely ruins your joy?' Something like that.

She tried to think about anachronism—what it means in literature, what it indicates about our confusion regarding the nature of space, our own persistent perishing—but found she was unable to hold on to the thought.

all men of a certain age tell this story, and they give themselves away by always using the same fruit. I have yet to meet the father who will look his child in the eye and say, "I was happy just to get some seedless grapes." But

There were, in fact, countless things he appreciated about AnnaLee. He liked her wildness, the way she carried herself like a great ship through the world; her grief, and her great mind; the way she listened in church, her strange vulnerability to her mother. She had a resilient, perfectly normal marriage, she was afraid to drive, and she dreamed primarily in smells. She interested him.

There was even evidence I loved my parents, and I sure felt something for my sister, although sometimes it was a palm itching to hit her.

When she first left for college I told Walt, could you hand me a napkin, Amos? she'd be back within the year, and there were some touch-and-go moments, but mostly she just breezed right through.

But you can't ever live in the place you dream about, the town you long for. You can't go there, and I don't mean like Thomas Wolfe or whatever, I mean the moment you become conscious of your desire, and then fulfill it, it evaporates.

One is either perfectly present and entirely innocent of one's own contentment (which is remarkably like not being content) or one is aware, and thus distanced, and no longer at home or happy. Am I wrong?

Remember the words of the Gnostic Jesus, I forget which book: 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.' " "It was Thomas." "Yes, the Book of Thomas.

there is simply nothing more comforting than the smell of one's own bed.

Everything is so temporary, she thought, so unrooted, and any one of us can just stand up and leave. She tried to imagine the world, even just one square mile of it, from the point of view of God—the appearances and vanishings, the abandoned objects, doors left open in haste—how it must look over centuries, but she felt her breath catch in her throat.

Mr. M. was in all ways the model of a band director, and by that I mean he could have led an assault on an innocent nation, enslaved its peoples, and had them marching in pinwheels, all in the course of one profoundly hot afternoon.

grief splinters, Taos, it splits off into fragments (I think nostalgia does this, too, nostalgia being a very specific manifestation of grief), and that each of those fragments then has a life of its own. Every day is a new way to grieve

A story about grief is actually a story about what is possible, multiple universes, up against the finite, or what happens when, as Tillich says, the infinitely removed makes itself felt.

I just wanted to reach out and touch it. I wanted to reach out and touch it and reach out and touch it, so I reached out and touched it, and she quick stood up and punched me in the arm.