Leonard Michaels > Quotes

“There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world.”
― Leonard Michaels

“March 6, 1961

I remembered a party in a house outside of Ann Arbor. There was a jazz band -- piano, bass, drums, and sax -- playing in one of the large rooms. A heavy odor of marijuana hung in the air. The host appeared now and then looking pleased, as if he liked seeing strangers in every room, the party out of his control. It wasn't wild, but with a constant flow of people, who knows what they're doing. It became late and I was a little drunk, wandering from one part of the house to another. I entered a long hall and was surprised by the silence, as if I had entered another house. A girl at the other end of the hall was walking toward me. I saw large blue eyes and very black hair. She was about average height, doll-like features delicate as cut glass, extremely pretty, maybe the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. When she came up to me I took her in my arms and kissed her. She let it happen. We were like creatures in a dream. Holding her hand, I drew her with me and we passed through rooms where people stood about, and then left the house. As we drove away, she said her name was Margo. She was a freshman at the university, from a town in northern Michigan. I took her home. It was obvious she'd never gone home with a man. She didn't seem fearful, only uncertain, the question in her eyes: "What happens next?" What happened next was nothing much. We fell asleep in our clothes. I wasn't the one to make her no different from everyone.”
― Leonard Michaels, Time out of Mind: The Diaries of Leonard Michaels, 1961-1995

“Of mystery there is no end. Of clarity, there is precious little.”
― Leonard Michaels, The Collected Stories

“In 1982, Raphael Nachman, visiting lecturer in mathematics at the university in Cracow, declined the tour of Auschwitz, where his grandparents had died, and asked instead to visit the ghetto where they had lived.”
― Leonard Michaels, The Collected Stories

“I read assiduously. I kept in touch with my species.”
― Leonard Michaels, Sylvia

“Never to have to think of yourself as white is a luxory that makes you deeply stupid.”
― Leonard Michaels, The Collected Stories

“Stories should be natural as apples, brief as lust, long as a thought.”
― Leonard Michaels

“So many writers make dope glamorous; a form of romantic transgression, or world-weariness, or poetic sensitivity, or hipness. Mainly it's the stuff of ritualistic communion among inarticulate bores.”
― Leonard Michaels

“Courage is continuing to perform your daily tasks, and being hopeful despite the odds, not inflicting your fears on others, and remaining sensitive to their needs and expectations, and also not supposing, because you're dying, nothing matters any more.”
― Leonard Michaels, Time out of Mind: The Diaries of Leonard Michaels, 1961-1995

“Something Evil

I said, "Ikstein stands outside the door for a long time before he knocks. Did you suspect that? Did you suspect that he stands there listening to what we say before he knocks?" She said, "Did you know you're crazy?" I said, "I'm not crazy. The expression on his face, when I open the door, is giddy and squirmy. As if he'd been doing something evil, like listening outside our door before he knocked." She said, "That's Ikstein's expression. Why do you invite him here? Leave the door open. He won't be able to listen to us. You won't make yourself crazy imagining it." I said, "Brilliant, but he isn't due for an hour and I won't sit here with the door open." She said, "I hate to listen to you talk this way. I won't be involved in your lunatic friendships." She opened the door. Ikstein stood there, giddy and squirmy.”
― Leonard Michaels, I Would Have Saved Them If I Could

“Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world.”
― Leonard Michaels

“Answers

I began two hundred hours of continuous reading in the twelve hours that remained before examinations. Melvin Bloom my roommate flipped the pages of his textbook in a sweet continuous trance. Reviewing the term's work was his pleasure. He went to sleep early. While he slept I bent into the night reading eating Benzedrine smoking cigarettes. Shrieking dwarfs charged across my notes. Crabs asked me questions. Melvin flipped a page blinked flipped another. He effected the same flipping and blinking with no textbook during examinations. For every question answers marched down his optical nerve neck arm and out onto his paper where they stopped in impeccable parade. I'd look at my paper oily scratched by ratlike misery and I'd think of Melvin Bloom. I would think Oh God what is going to happen to me.”
― Leonard Michaels, I Would Have Saved Them If I Could

“May 20, '95 - Mississippi calls. She says, "All my working life I have done things to help black people. I can drive into the black part of town where no white person would dare to go. I have nothing to fear. They say, 'Hi there, Mizz Mississippi.' I still call them niggers, but only because of the way they act. I'd have an affair with Johnnie Cochran in a minute." Once she said to me, "I don't see why I should have to feel guilty about the Holocaust. It's not my fault." I hadn't been talking or thinking about the Holocaust, and hadn't told anyone to feel guilty. Her remark came out of nowhere. We were in a diner, about to have a sandwich and suddenly the moment was explosive. Simply being a Jew arouses a peculiar expectation mixed with resentment, even in a highly intelligent woman. Amazing to me is that she doesn't do much but watch television, drink beer, and smoke Marlboros, and yet seethes with dark thoughts and tumultuous feeling.”
― Leonard Michaels

“Most offensive is what he imagines a person thinks about himself.”
― Leonard Michaels

“Maybe for the love I desecrated by not believing in Sylvia’s pain. I felt utterly sincere, apologizing, kissing her. It was too delicious, I think.”
― Leonard Michaels, Sylvia

“Feb. 1, 1965

Storm late at night, heavy rain, a thunderous racket, the windows shaking. I heard my name called. A woman’s voice in hell pleading with me to join her.”
― Leonard Michaels, Time out of Mind: The Diaries of Leonard Michaels, 1961-1995

“I have no job, no job, no job. I’m not published. I have nothing to say. I’m married to a madwoman.”
― Leonard Michaels, Sylvia

“So clumsy, yet her dinner parties were splendid, prepared at unbelievable speed. She hated to cook. Chewing gum, cigarettes, candy, drugs, alcohol, and taxicabs took her from Monday to Friday.”
― Leonard Michaels, The Collected Stories

“Tolstoy, a greater novelist, is a greater sinner. In Anna Karenina, he makes almost everyone who reads the book fall in love with Anna—thus preserving the mystery—despite the fact that she is narcissistic, self-indulgent, materialistic, irresponsible, inconsiderate, with bad taste in the men she marries or loves. Nevertheless, she is charming and gorgeous, and it is impossible for men not to fall in love with her, including Levin, who is surely Tolstoy himself and knows better. Ultimately the mystery of love leads to her suicide, and the probable death of her lover, and the destruction of her husband’s career and moral character.”
― Leonard Michaels, The Essays of Leonard Michaels

“Sylvia could be happy and funny, but it is easier to remember the bad times. They were more sensational; also less painful now than remembering what I loved.”
― Leonard Michaels, Sylvia

“Jag tänkte på kvinnorna igen. Ilska, identitet, politik, rätt, fel. Jag var avundsjuk på dem. Det verkade eftersträvansvärt att vara orättvist behandlad i vårt samhälle. Det ger en något att kämpa för, det gör en moraliskt överlägsen, det gör en allvarlig.”
― Leonard Michaels, The Men's Club: An Expanded Edition

“La peggiore notizia – se è pubblicata su un giornale – con ogni probabilità non è capitata a chi legge, e offre un collegamento di rassicurante normalità con la vita quotidiana.”
― Leonard Michaels, Sylvia