Allan Gurganus > Quotes

“Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.”
― Allan Gurganus

“Stories only happen to people who can tell them.”
― Allan Gurganus

“Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape. ”
― Allan Gurganus, White People

“Beware of using up your last forty years in being the curator of your first fifty.”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“How soon, sugar, the terrible becomes routine. We've all got this dangerous built-in talent: for turning horrors into errands. You hear folks wonder how the Germans could have done it? I believe part of the answer is: They made extermination be a nine-to-five activity. You know, salaries? Lunch breaks? And the staff came and did their job and went home and ate supper and slept and woke and came back and did their job and went home and ate their supper and slept and woke and came back and did their job. --That's partly how you get anything done, especially a chore what's dreadful, dreadful. -- Honey? we've all got to be real careful of what we can get used to.”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“The tree feels splintery, nasty to my touch; it feels Floridian, more reptile than vegetable, more stucco than stone. I do loathe this state, their Elba.”
― Allan Gurganus, Plays Well with Others

“Writing means being a fascinated slave to current events.”
― Alan Gurganus

“Truth always leaves a pleasure asking questions.”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“(Spring is the earth forgiving itself.)”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“I started thinking of my absentee diamond. My thumb and little finger kept reaching for their pet and sidekick.”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“We'd die here, old together, safe with each other's secrets. We were each other's juvenilia”
― Allan Gurganus, Plays Well with Others

“He, the true writer, is the department store dummy at the very center of the whole establishment, the one left alone on display all night, a price tag stapled to every piece of clothing they’ve yanked onto him, binoculars and frog flippers included. He is the neutral, generic human form, the gray center who must always assume disguises — in order to be seen and, therefore, to feel himself.”
― Allan Gurganus

“Unlike her, nothing had yet happened to him.”
― Allan Gurganus, Local Souls

“Fifteen, that’s the age when the only world event that counts is whatever mood you’re in that day.”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“Imagine how titanic an echo chamber this great city would seem without the noise of eve none of mine. A huge bronze bell deprived of one hidden small iron clapper, its sole reason for being, its single means of song.”
― Allan Gurganus, Plays Well with Others

“All Mrs. B’s furniture was missing limbs or spines or cushions—bricks and broomsticks were busy being everything’s crutch—but the room looked beautiful anyhow. Especially if you squinted some.”
― Allan Gurganus, White People

“Lord-Express have mercy on our stop-making, stuttering local. Place me expressly beyond these stares, past such terrible embarrassment. I say I do not feel it. I feel it. Credit me at least for trying to help my others. Let me trust your blueprint even though you’re really succch a bad designer. Let me know how best to clean up after people other people do not want … Let Ninety-sixth Street happen soooooon! Say my friends are at least as safe as they are dead. And since You’ve done all this to them, could You please just let them go now? Just leave my boys the fuck alone.”
― Allan Gurganus, Plays Well with Others

“Growth pains already,” Mom said under a sigh pancake-sized.”
― Allan Gurganus, Local Souls

“All their lives they’ve said how Folks that don’t Work should Starve. Now they can’t work but they ain’t ready for what they been wishing on the shiftless of all races.”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“The chances of achieving literary performance are, to the decimal point, the odds against becoming fully human.

That means one hundred and fifty million to one.

Which means one hundred and fifty million in one.”
― Allan Gurganus

“Till the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, most American men wore hats to work. What happened? Did our guys—suddenly scouting overhead for worse Sunday raids—come to fear their hatbrims' interference?”
― Allan Gurganus, Prize Stories 2000: The O. Henry Awards

“Into one docile river, I heaved the non-word Shadowlawn. Lettering upward, cheerful as a duck, the log did not sink but happily bobbed elsewhere as if seeking finer property to describe.”
― Allan Gurganus, Local Souls

“Seemed our house stirred up troubles enough to keep a radio soap show in daily episodes forever.”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“Once you harden, the arteries do.”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“horehound”
― Allan Gurganus, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

“The visit has commenced. The box step, three-quarter waltz time. No fast moves or sudden stops.”
― Allan Gurganus, Plays Well with Others