Tom McNeal > Quotes

“For you, I was a chapter. For me, you were the book.”
― Tom McNeal

“Sometimes I think the cover of a book as a door to another world...but other times I think of it as an escape hatch from this one. I guess it's the same thing.”
― Tom McNeal

“He says that all that happens when you go far, far away is that you discover you've brought yourself along.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“Adolescence is a skin we never quite shed.”
― Tom McNeal, To Be Sung Underwater

“Distance means so little, when someone means so much.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“One does not know love until it arrives, and it's arrival will always surprise.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“Well, it is true. Sometimes avoiding something can give it more and more meaning rather than less and less.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“She was surprised at how deflating his presence was.”
― Tom McNeal, To Be Sung Underwater

“He turned toward my voice. "Am I well?" His mocking tone was unmistakable. "Am I well? Why can't you just talk like everyone else? Why can't you just say, 'How you doin'? You doin' good?'"

Very well, then, I said. I look forward to the day when every schoolchild will read Shakespeare's great comedic play All's Good That Ends Good.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“I'm saying she looks fine on the outside, but inside is somebody who's going to need a man a lot more than he's going to need her.”
― Tom McNeal

“When my nephew passed beyond, Wilhelm comforted himself that a child in his innocence would be delivered speedily to heaven, and there be given an honored place. “In this small, simple throne,” Wilhelm said, and I said, “With secret compartments for his bird’s nests and smooth stones.” Wilhelm believed this. He had to believe this. I, too, repeated this conception to myself again and again, trying harder to harder to believe it. But a Creator who takes a child so small, so kind, so tender? What can be made of that? The tales we collected are not merciful. Villains are boiled in snake-filled oil, wicked Steifmutter-stepmothers-are made to dance into death in molten-hot shoes, and on and on. The tales are full of terrible punishments, yes, but they follow just cause. Goodness is rewarded; evil is not. The generous simpleton finds more happiness and coin than the greedy king. So why not mercy and justice to sweet youth from an omnipotent and benevolent Creator? There are only three answers. He is not omnipotent, or he is not benevolent, or-the dreariest possibility of all-he is inattentive. What if that was what happened to my nephew? That God’s gaze had merely strayed elsewhere?”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“It was as Ginger's grandfather had said. It did not matter how far you go, you always take yourself with you.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“Here’s the thing, Judy. Here’s the thing we have to look at and accept. For you, I was a chapter—a good chapter, maybe, or even your favorite chapter, but still, just a chapter—and for me, you were the book.” “No, no, Willy, what you’re saying about me—that’s just not true,” she said, but she didn’t say what she thought was the truer, darker truth: that, to use his metaphor, he had been most of the book, but she had been too careless or self-absorbed or oblivious to know it, and it was too late to change the ending.”
― Tom McNeal, To Be Sung Underwater

“You know, for a while there we kept horses for the boys, and we had a mare that had broken down. Couldn't ride it... You could feed it and brush it and water it and all. Sometimes, I've thought that's what most marriages get to. A horse you still care a little about but cannot any longer ride.”
― Tom McNeal, To Be Sung Underwater

“It is the first shower that wets."

"Marriage is like picking the place where you're going to live for the next fifty years by using a wall map, a blind fold, and what you really, truly, deeply believe is your lucky dart."

"Our marriage, like all marriages, was happy until it wasn't”
― Tom McNeal, To Be Sung Underwater

“You can't let buffoons rule your life.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“Even as Camille's beauty and precocity took form, when pride alone might have nurtured proprietary feelings, she never seemed quite the child Judith was meant to call her own.”
― Tom McNeal, To Be Sung Underwater

“And then, before I could shout in alarm, the tear spilled free—and there was nothing for me to do but rush past and, with the smallest draft, ever so slightly alter its flight. The tear landed, safely, on her cheek. Her eyes snapped open in surprise.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“The studies, Jeremy, I said. The studies, the studies, the studies.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“It's like picking the place you're going to live for the next fifty years by using a wall map, a blindfold, and what you really, truly, deeply believe is your lucky dart.' Sullenly Judith said, `I don't believe I have a lucky dart,' and her mother cast an unhappy smile her way and said, `You will, though.”
― Tom McNeal, To Be Sung Underwater

“I will always care for you, even if we're not together and even if we're far, far away.”
― Tom McNeal

“But that is the way of the world, is it not? Every day a child steps away from the parent by the littlest distance, perhaps just the width of a mouse-whisker, but every day it happens and the days go by, one after another after another”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“In the old tales, kindness is the purest form of heroism. Find the character who meets the world with a big heart and an open hand and you have found your hero or heroine.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“If we were honest about it, our lives are all fiascoes. There really isn’t anything of importance except maybe who gets handed your heart and what they do with it. And just so you don’t spend a lot of time fretting over it, even that may be pretty meager.” A few seconds passed. “We’re just small, Judy. All of us, even though we do stuff every day of the week to distract ourselves from the fact, it’s still true. We’re just little and small and maybe if we have some backbone we do a few things worth doing and then we’re gone.”
― Tom McNeal, To Be Sung Underwater

“Well, it’s all a kind of puzzle, isn’t it? You start out with your own little set of pieces you’re trying to fit together, then you get married and it’s a lot more pieces, way more than double in my opinion, and next thing you have kids and all of a sudden there are too many pieces for the table, and more showing up every day.” He gave a small dry laugh. “I suppose the Buddhists and them would say you just got to appreciate the ever-changing thinginess of the puzzle.”
― Tom McNeal, To Be Sung Underwater

“...the kind of love that picks you up in Akron and sets you down in Rio...”
― Tom McNeal (Author)

“I am sure one of those things we are here for is to make certain that those whom we love fall asleep each night assured of that love.”
― Tom McNeal , To Be Sung Underwater

“Fine girl. Smart as a whip. Conk’s nuts about her, but I don’t encourage it. He’d bore that girl in a year, if not sooner.” He shrugged. “Probably anybody would.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“Sten Blix.”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

“But a Creator who takes a child so small, so kind, so tender? What can be made of that? The tales we collected are not merciful. Villains are boiled in snake-filled oil, wicked Stiefmütter—stepmothers—are made to dance into death in molten-hot shoes, and on and on. The tales are full of terrible punishments, yes, but they follow just cause. Goodness is rewarded; evil is not. The generous simpleton finds more happiness and coin than the greedy king. So why not mercy and justice to a sweet youth from an omnipotent and benevolent Creator? There are only three answers. He is not omnipotent, or he is not benevolent, or—the dreariest possibility of all—he is inattentive. What if that was what happened to my nephew? That God’s gaze had merely strayed elsewhere?”
― Tom McNeal, Far Far Away