Joseph Monninger > Quotes

“...These stars will be gone one day for you. They will be for me, too. The Raven promises me I will turn back to sticks and dirt, and I believe him. But until then I am a human being and that is something to be. I stand on my feet and I look at the stars and I feel the seasons. If you work at it long enough, I promise you that will be enough for you...This world, every day, it's enough.”
― Joseph Monninger

“We read not to escape, but to go deeper into life.”
― Joseph Monninger

“In a universe, on a continent, in a country, in a state, in a county, on a river, in a small yellow boat,' I said. 'That's what Mary used to say to explain the odds of us meeting. And you have to be born in roughly the same period. Those are the odds. And probably you need to speak the same language.'-- Cobb”
― Joseph Monninger, Eternal on the Water

“...'My father called me an enthusiast. I am enthusiastic about things. A lot of things.' - Mary”
― Joseph Monninger

“Don’t spit into heaven... Don’t tell the gods your plans; they’ll only laugh.”
― Joseph Monninger, Eternal on the Water

“We are alive, the wolves said. And the world is beautiful.”
― Joseph Monninger, Eternal on the Water

“What we find in a dog is what we bring to a dog.”
― Joseph Monninger, Whippoorwill

“It’s the Thanksgiving rule. That’s another life tip.” “Explain,” I said. “Oh, Thanksgiving is this massive meal that usually takes someone about three days to prepare, and then everyone sits down and eats it in about fifteen minutes. The trick is to learn to take your time with Thanksgiving. You have to get everyone to promise that they won’t get up for anything for at least an hour. Maybe two.”
― Joseph Monninger, Eternal on the Water

“Dove, Cannery Row, The Godfather, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Odd Sea, The World According to Garp, Siddhartha. Thirties: Rabbit Is Rich, The Golden Notebook, In Cold Blood, Crime and Punishment, The Last Boy, The Professional, Roots, Great Heart, Tropic of Cancer, King of the World, Judgment Ridge, Islands in the Stream, The Devil’s Teeth. Forties: The Islandman, Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Right Stuff, The Last Duel, War and Peace, The Orchard, The Secret History, Of Human Bondage, A River Runs Through It, Death Comes for the Archbishop, A Moveable Feast, We Took to the Woods, Nine Mile Bridge, A Fine Balance. Fifties: Miriam at Thirty-Four, The Hair of Harold Roux, The Horsemen, Give Me My Father’s Body (reissued in a revised and updated edition as Minik), Endurance, As I Lay Dying, Snow Falling on Cedars, Emma, The Long Lavender Look, Shadow Divers, The Devil’s Candy, Moriarty, The Last Place on Earth, The Power and the Glory. Sixties: Bleak House; The Sound and the Fury; Catherine the Great; Last Train to Memphis; The”
― Joseph Monninger, Goodbye to Clocks Ticking: How We Live While Dying

“I liked her smile. And I knew that I had fallen in love. I knew that I wanted to run rivers with her, and camp, and go out to dinner and dance, and meet people with her by my side, and establish routines, and hear every knock-knock joke in her repertoire. I knew that. The knowledge came as simply as clean linen.”
― Joseph Monninger, Eternal on the Water

“My body might be ill, I granted, but the paper worlds I had visited in my life remained vast and memorable. No matter what happened to me, no matter how the months ahead would shear me, a thousand books waited to rescue me, the simple flying carpet of black print on white pages a friend as trusted as any I had ever encountered.”
― Joseph Monninger, Goodbye to Clocks Ticking: How We Live While Dying

“30-percent incline”
― Joseph Monninger, Crash

“Love, I've always thought, is showing up. It's saying yes when no is easier.”
― Joseph Monninger, Goodbye to Clocks Ticking: How We Live While Dying

“A man always hears the first time,” Julie said, smiling at us, “but he makes you tell him twice. Especially if he’s your husband. Men have their tricks. Don’t ever think they don’t.”
― Joseph Monninger, Finding Somewhere

“It must be like a rush hour inside your head with all those thoughts driving around.”
― Joseph Monninger, Whippoorwill

“All morning I thought how strange our meeting was. I mean, we have to be in a universe, on a continent, in a country, in a state, in a county, on a river, in a small yellow boat.[...]Long odds. And we had to leave our homes at the right time, drive at such and such a pace, stop for lunch, or not, get gas, or not. A thousand coincidences that arranged themselves so that we could meet. And then of course, we have to be attracted to each other. When I was little, my girlfriends and I called it Yeti love. You never expect to see it, but you've heard it's out there and it might just be a legend. But you keep looking for it anyway.”
― Joseph Monninger, Eternal on the Water

“I checked Delores, she appeared to be running on a lake top, a girl on a fairy horse sprinting across fresh water. As I looked, Delores let go of the bay’s mane and sat straight up, riding only with her legs and hips, her arms out as if to fly. She tilted her head back, too, and she looked so perfect doing it that I didn’t dare try to copy her. This was something only for her, something I could only witness, and she galloped down that hill with her soul somewhere up in the sky above her. We both knew it, and we never had to mention it. T”
― Joseph Monninger, Finding Somewhere

“He wondered if most men didn't reach toward love faster than they truly understood it.”
― Joseph Monninger, Margaret from Maine

“He is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him: he is indeed a horse; and all other jades you may call beasts,”
― Joseph Monninger, Finding Somewhere

“You see how things might be and you aren’t afraid to risk something to have it.”
― Joseph Monninger, Margaret from Maine

“I came across an Etruscan word, saeculum, which is a concept, or marker, of a temporal interval. Generally speaking, it is the span of time lived by the oldest person present. The day will come…when the last person to have fought in Vietnam will die. . . .Who will remember when . . . a car had to be cranked to start or when the clank of an ice delivery man carrying fifty-pound block in tongs brought merriment to the afternoon?

I wonder, then, what would be my saeculum. Or whom. I wonder what young nephew or niece’s child, siphoned through the tunnel of time, would see a faded photograph of me and search their memories for my name. I think he was some sort of great-uncle, she or he will say. I don’t remember exactly. Look at his clothes!”
― Joseph Monninger, Goodbye to Clocks Ticking: How We Live While Dying