Wally Lamb > Quotes

“Love is like breathing. You take it in and let it out.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“I think... the secret is to just settle for the shape of your life takes...Instead of you know, always waiting and wishing for what might make you happy.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“I know it's a crock of shit. I ain't offering you happily-ever-after. I'm offering you... happily-maybe-sometimes-ever-after. Sort of. You know, with warts and shit." -Thayer”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“With destruction comes renovation.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“I cried because I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.”
― Wally Lamb

“Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and do something about them.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“It was a matter of perspective, I began to see.
The whole world was crazy; I'd flattered myself by assuming I was a semifinalist."
-- Dolores Price”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“Life seemed nearest to acceptable at four A.M.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“This was what could happen to you: you could end up this far from where you thought you were going.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“I usually learn more from the situations I hate than the ones I love.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“Religion's just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all.”
― Wally Lamb

“We are like water, aren’t we? We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. But strong and destructive, too.” And something else, I think to myself. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance.”
― Wally Lamb, We Are Water

“I thought about how love was always the thing that did that - smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“I walked over and looked closer at the statue of the goddess. She was wearing a headdress with a skull and a cobra and a crescent moon. Maybe this is what peace of mind was all about: having a poisonous snake on your head and smiling anyway. ”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“Here is a girl who is pretty in a quiet way. I bet she's had a very sad life.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“It is all connected Dominick," she said. "Life is not a series of isolated ponds & puddles; life is this river you see below, before you. It flows from the past through the present on it's way to the future.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“He's splitting me open, I thought. He'll break me and then I'll die.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“All the dead bolts, pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“The greatest griefs are silent.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“A woman who surrenders her freedom need not surrender her dignity.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“Maybe that's what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try news things but still makes you feel safe.”
― Wally Lamb, We Are Water

“I don't know. Maybe we're all chaos theorists. Lovers of pattern and predictability, we're scared shitless of explosive change. But we're fascinated by it, too. Drawn to it. Travelers tap their brakes to ogle the mutilation and mangled metal on the side of the interstate, and the traffic backs up for miles. Hijacked planes crash into skyscrapers, breached levees drown a city, and CNN and the networks rush to the scene so that we can all sit in front of our TVs and feast on the footage. Stare, stunned, at the pandemonium--the devils let loose from their cages.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“that's the funny thing about mazes: what's baffling on the ground begins to makes sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself". (p. 717)”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“That's the trouble with survival of the fittest, isn't it, Dominick? The corpse at your feet. That little inconvenience.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True