Stewart O'Nan > Quotes

“You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story

“The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.”
― Stewart O'Nan

“The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love?”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story

“The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old?”
― Stewart O'Nan, Songs for the Missing

“To be lost and forgotten-to be abandoned-is a shared and terrible fear, just as our fondest hope, as we grow older, is that we might leave some parts of us behind in the hearts of those we love and in that way live on.”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy

“I don't like coming home. It keeps me from being nostalgic, which by nature I am. Even before the plane begins its descent, I find myself dreading the questions left unanswered by my childhood. ”
― Stewart O'Nan

“She had a vision of the two of them trapped on a tiny raft surrounded by miles of open water. It would be a kind of test, like surviving on a desert island--but that's what a marriage was, wasn't it? They would have to help each other or die.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Songs for the Missing

“Come then, come with us, out into the night. Come now, America the lovesick, America the timid, the blessed, the educated, come stalk the dark backroads and stand outside the bright houses, calm as murderers in the yard, quiet as deer. Come, you slumberers, you lumps, arise from your legion of sleep and fly. Come, all you dreamers, all you zombies, all you monsters. What are you doing anyway, paying the bills, washing the dishes, waiting for the doorbell? Come on, take your keys, leave the bowl of candy on the porch, put on the suffocating mask of someone else and breathe. Be someone you don't love so much, for once. Listen: like the children, we only have one night.”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Night Country

“There was a lot about Kim and J.P. he didn't get.... he was confused by their lack of romance. As a father, he was at times grateful for that missing intensity, but as a man who liked to surprise his wife with flowers, it baffled him. Maybe he was old-fashioned, but to him a couple meant a strong bond, with positive and negative charges constantly arcing between them. He'd never seen Kim and J.P. kiss, let alone argue.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Songs for the Missing

“They should."

"Should be like a wood bee," she said.

It was a private joke, a mocking appreciation of the slipperiness of even the simplest hope, a nonce catchphrase like so many others lifted from favorite movies or TV shows that served as a rote substitute for conversation and bound them like shut-in twins, each other's best and, most often, only audience.”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story

“Just contemplating the energy required to make small talk tired him.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Henry, Himself

“I'm sorry you don't like coming back here," her mother often said, to cap whatever petty dust-up they'd had. How could Emily explain: it wasn't her mother or Kersey she'd disowned, but her earlier self, that strange, ungrateful girl who strove to be first at everything and threw tantrums when she failed.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Emily, Alone

“Maybe he was old-fashioned, but to him a couple meant a strong bond, with positive and negative charges constantly arcing between them.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Songs for the Missing

“Often, as she leafed through the sticky, plastic-coated pages, spotting herself with a frizzy perm or wearing a loud, printed blouse, she was struck by how long life was, and how much time had passed, and she wished she could go back and apologize to those closest to her, explain that she understood now. Impossible, and yet the urge to return and be a different person never lessened, grew only more acute.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Emily, Alone

“It was the ultimate cautionary tale, the moral being Don't fall, as if they were made of glass. In a sense they were--their fragility was irrefutable, medically proven--and yet Emily detested the inevitable rundown of accidents and tragedies, the more fortunate clucking their tongues and counting their blessings, all the while knowing it was just a matter of time. She didn't need to be reminded that she was a single misstep from disaster, especially here, without Henry, surrounded by the survivors of an earlier life.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Emily, Alone

“For most of her life she just expected things would work out, that people would be kind. Now she recognized her good fortune for what it was. She'd been lucky in so much, it had left her woefully unprepared for old age.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Emily, Alone

“He could no longer be that Ed Larsen, but, through a lack of imagination or just sheer exhaustion, he couldn't come up with a new one, and faked his way through the days like a bad actor...”
― Stewart O'Nan, Songs for the Missing

“There was mystery at the heart of any of marriage, secrets even people close to it would never know.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Henry, Himself

“She didn't want to be one of those old ladies obsessed with death, hearing it in every tick of the clock and creak of the floorboards, as if it were prowling around the house like a burglar”
― Stewart O'Nan, Emily, Alone

“Like a funeral, a birthday wasn't yours but for the people who loved you.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Henry, Himself

“Late in life, after his mother had died, his father cried at baptisms and funerals and sappy movies on TV, age stripping away a final protective layer. Now Henry could feel the same softening taking place inside him, a helpless grief for the past and boundless pity for the world, and that was right too. No fool like an old fool.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Henry, Himself

“Somewhere in this latest humiliation there was a lesson in self-reliance. He'd failed so completely that he'd become his own man again.”
― Stewart O'Nan, West of Sunset

“Being agreeable didn't make people less difficult.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Henry, Himself

“You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole—like the world, or the person you loved."
Stewart O’Nan”
― Stewart O’Nan

“The city was a puzzle box built of symbols, a confusion of old and new, armored cars and donkeys in the streets, Bedouins and bankers. The Turks and Haredim, the showy Greek and Russian processions -- everyone seemed to be in costume, reenacting the miraculous past.”
― Stewart O'Nan, City of Secrets

“The single dinner plate, the silent house, the tumbler in the sink--this was how it would be if he lost her. His mother had gone quickly, from liver cancer, the mass discovered too late. He thought of his father alone in his condo, crossing off days on the calendar like a prisoner. He'd survived her by thirteen years, yet every time Henry saw him, he quoted her as if they'd just spoken. Henry could picture himself doing the same to the children. He already lived too much in his memory.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Henry, Himself

“While she was away, he'd forgotten how powerfully she broadcast her feelings, filling the house like a kind of nerve gas.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Henry, Himself

“Her anger was the fuel she used to keep going.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Henry, Himself

“Lately it seems there are mysteries everywhere, as if you've only just opened your eyes.”
― Stewart O'Nan, A Prayer for the Dying

“On that question Henry kept his opinion to himself. It was all speculation anyway. People were going to do what they were going to do. After a certain age he’d ceased to believe he might influence their lives.”
― Stewart O'Nan, Henry, Himself