Atticus Lish > Quotes

“If a girl is traveling in the steppe and she sees nothing but a single moving dot in the great distance, the dot sees her. Stag, man, wolf.”
― Atticus Lish

“You to seem to react so negatively to me. That's all I know. And it hurts...it hurts.”
― Atticus Lish, Life Is with People

“First you eats you food, then you plays with you ball and you friends.”
― Atticus Lish, Life Is with People

“There was nothing he could say that was equal to the curve of her hip.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“Even as he drank my health, I longed to have him killed --- such was my dislike of Gustave's "free and easy" disposition.”
― Atticus Lish, Life Is with People

“Maybe we're ordinary people, but the feeling between us is real.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“Her love, something he was so unused to, seemed to hasten the emotional outpouring.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“If you’re getting married, it better be a real marriage or you’ll be in big trouble. That I’ll tell you for free. Free advice. She didn’t understand what he meant. What do you mean? Maybe we’re ordinary people, but the feeling between us is real.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“She could not believe her fortune. How life surprised her.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“When I get really depressed, death is the only thing that excites me. It cuts through the numb blur and becomes the one real intoxicating choice.”
― Atticus Lish

“Waiting didn’t make any sense, he said. If there was something you wanted to do, you better do it today, because you didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“If you put your head up, the Taiwanese bosses would make sure your head got pushed back down again. He did not have to pay you. You were an illegal immigrant in your own country, you found out. That’s how big China was.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“In it, she beheld what was possible. The city was uncontained. It covered a massive area and graded out into the world.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“Why not? Is there something wrong with me? That’s something for you to ask yourself. That’s not my issue.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“The bright side, she said, was that she had met him and they could form an army of their own, a two-person unit, to fight these difficult battles involving his mental recovery and her immigration status.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“If you keep going to that way, west, west, west, you will be the ocean, then China. No one will understand you. Everyone will be confusing. Maybe it’s different for you.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“her leg. Above all, she wanted to do something she could control. She wanted to reject every solution that involved going through a government office. It wasn’t realistic, but she wished she could reduce everything to the simple physical test of running away.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“The sweet sharp pain that foreshadows weeping visited him again in the throat and eyes.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“The light strengthened gradually and silently, changing from gray to rose to gold.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“The story of the episode came back to him in exaggerated form, with him an even bigger fool, a mark, getting played for even more of his mother's money. His friendship with Dave Dunbar ended.”
― Atticus Lish, The War for Gloria

“She was what he had ached for when he had been over there. When he had believed he was going to die, the idea of never having a woman to love him had summed up all his pain.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“He would have signed up even if the recruiters hadn’t come right to his high school. 9/11 was the big reason, but he would have gone anyway, just to do something.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“HIS EPISODES OF WEEPING had not started yet, but they would. Her love, something he was so unused to, seemed to hasten the emotional outpouring.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“I love you, he said. She did not respond and he wondered if the words sounded as empty to her as they had to him. He stroked her back and hip. There was nothing he could say that was equal to the curve of her hip.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“This was the news that Skinner received before he went to New York alone, holding to the idea that if he partied hard enough, he’d eventually succeed in having a good time and would start wanting to live again.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“When they fought, she was nearly incapacitated by sadness, but that was inside. On the outside, her limbs still moved: she pressed on, she went to work.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“She began to watch for the signs of his mood changing. She began to expect her happiness to be taken away from her. The worse life got, the more she needed her happiness with him.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

“But now, as he thought about Molly, he felt he had to do something bigger—something of which prizefighting was merely a subcomponent: warfare at its highest level—expeditionary, total, encompassing the realms of sea, air, land—even space—something so great it could kill him, forcing him to overcome with finality the inner weakness and self-regard that had allowed him to fail everyone around him—a path to honor, invincibility, pride and moral purity—where his father had indulged in scandal, obscenity and dysfunction.”
― Atticus Lish, The War for Gloria

“I love your war, she said.”
― Atticus Lish

“There was an aching in her eyes from loneliness. When she closed them, tears scattered down her face.”
― Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life