Alison Anderson > Quotes

“...joy is a thing to be shared, quickly, without hesitation.”
― Alison Anderson, Hidden Latitudes: A Novel of Amelia Earhart

“To have wings and yet to want to ride...”
― Alison Anderson, Hidden Latitudes: A Novel of Amelia Earhart

“She has known some happiness there, a privileged moment of revelation, a glimpse into an unexplored part of herself, into something beyond herself. But she is also suspicious of such moment; they do not last, and one never knows where and when they might recur, like islands of an uncharted archipelago. p 108”
― Alison Anderson, Hidden Latitudes: A Novel of Amelia Earhart

“...he is caught by the urgency of departure, as if this island were not good enough.

p 133”
― Alison Anderson, Hidden Latitudes: A Novel of Amelia Earhart

“It had been hard t live int he wilderness without a goal, without a future. Now, at last, we had one.

p 166”
― Alison Anderson, Hidden Latitudes: A Novel of Amelia Earhart

“Others may use one’s blindness to find a place of comfort.”
― Alison Anderson, The Summer Guest

“You take the words, she thought; by themselves, individually, they are almost meaningless. You take them one by one and you build not only a description, a vision, but also a memory, where you are present, and he is present, too, though neither of you is described by those words. What sort of magic was this?”
― Alison Anderson, The Summer Guest

“There’s something to be said for naïveté. Up to a point in life, anyway. When did you lose it, do you suppose—was it a person or an event?”
― Alison Anderson, The Summer Guest

“The power of giving life, whether we like it or not: what a tragic farce. And what on earth am I supposed to do if I don’t want that power, if in my guts I reject it?”
― Alison Anderson, All Your Children, Scattered

“To be dissatisfied in the present moment—what a torment that must be, constantly pursuing one with doubt and disappointment. I”
― Alison Anderson, The Summer Guest

“Because we give life more often than we take it, we owe it to ourselves to offer the human solution to the violence of men.”
― Alison Anderson, All Your Children, Scattered

“How she had struggled with the language but learned all the while something completely unexpected and equally precious: another way of seeing the world. It was as if material things no longer had any value except as markers of memory; all the familiar concepts of wealth, ambition, power, success, had seemed to fade away, irrelevant. She had been dipped into a rough poetry of everyday life and come out not exactly speaking Russian but versed in an idiom of pleasure in simple things, in sudden friendship, in an almost mystical perception of something deeper and inexplicably vital.”
― Alison Anderson, The Summer Guest

“If I’d encouraged you to learn to play an instrument, to sing in a group, maybe you wouldn’t have gone to war?”
― Alison Anderson, All Your Children, Scattered

“The music was scraping me from within, but I needed it more than anything. To prove to myself that I am still alive, to witness the alchemy that turns sadness to a beauty I can still see.”
― Alison Anderson, The Summer Guest

“Zina - We need novels somehow, don't we? And why? We need literature and poetry the way we need music or the view of the (river) Psyol . . . perhaps I have answered my own question. But why literature, Anton Pavlovich? Why words? You must know?
Anton - Ah, I suppose it's like anything, Zinaida Mikhailovna, like religion or, as you say, music. Is there really an answer? Do we want an answer? For some mysterious reason, a story - and all the more so a poem - finds an echo in one's spirit, first of all. It can entertain, as I said, then it can console, as you said, and obviously it helps us to see and understand the world. And it asks questions, helps us to find answers - and beauty. Not to forget beauty. And like any other form of art, I suppose literature can be uplifting.”
― Alison Anderson

“You must bend, bend to the will of circumstances.”
― Alison Anderson, The Summer Guest