Alison McGhee > Quotes

“You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging leaping from their mouths. Silence? No.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“Your heart literally hurts when it's breaking. You can feel it, every beat another ache, and nothing you can do will stop it, either from beating or breaking.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“Don't hurt someone who cares about you like that. You're not the only person in the world who's ever been hurt. Don't be cruel. Don't go breaking someone else's heart in the hope that you'll feel better. Becaues you won't.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“Water seeks its own level. Look at them. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Yangtze. The world's great rivers. And every one of them finds its way to the ocean.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“What is the matter with these people, these people who won't stop fighting, won't stop hurting each other long enough to see that a body is a thing of beauty, is a miracle of rivers and oceans and islands and continents contained within itself? That the brain is divided into two hemispheres, each symmetrical, each perfect, each with its own system of waterways. These people of war should be shown an x-ray of an intraparenchymal hemorrhage, of a hemorrhage in an eighteen-year-old girl's brain, a girl named Ivy. Take a look at that, people of war. See, you should not hurt each other, and this is why. Without you ever even trying, this is what can happen to your body, your beautiful body, and your brain, your beautiful symmetrical brain, and your heart, and your soul.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“All it takes is a single moment.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“There comes a point at which you stop giving things up. That is what i won't give up. None of it will i give up, for my beautiful sister Ivy who lies in bed. Ivy who used to be alive. Ivy who used to be. Ivy who used. Ivy who.
Ivy-who-is-not-me.
Not me. Not me. Not me.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“And she tried to breathe.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“They were stupid, stupid people.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“The world should have stopped, but it didn't. The world kept on going. How can the world just keep on going? An earthquake in India kills a thousand people, and the world keeps on going. A famine in China kills a million people, and the world keeps on going. The twin towers of the World Trade Center buckle and fall, and the world, the world keeps on going.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“What is the matter with these people, these people who won't stop fighting, won't stop hurting each other...?”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“Wouldn't want to miss a war, would I?”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“I'll live in another world, then.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“But there's more to this world than meets the eye, isn't there?”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“Feel how tight my arms are around you?" he said. "This is how tight I'll be holding you. No matter where you go or where I go, remember how tight I'm holding you.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“What, exactly, would you give up?”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“You are most powerful when you are most silent. Poeple never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They except to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words leaping forth from their mouths. Silence? No.”
― Alison McGhee

“My heart is breaking," I tell him, and it's the truth. Your heart literally hurts when it's breaking. You can feel it, every beat another ache, and nothing you can do will stop it, either from beating or breaking.”
― Alison McGhee

“I shiver and Tom wakes. It's light enough to see his eyes open.
"Are you cold?" he says. "Baby, are you cold?"
He turns so that his arms are around me again. Baby, are cold?-and the ball of hurt inside me swells.”
― Alison McGhee, All Rivers Flow to the Sea

“Are any of us safe? How do we make it through? How, when you know you are going to leave this life whether you want to or not - when you know that you and everyone you love will leave this life - do we make it? I don't want to die.”
― Alison McGhee

“Living without love is worse than dying, Younger." William T.”
― Alison McGhee

“There comes a time, Younger," he says, "when the book must be put aside, and the pedal put to the metal. And that time, by God, has come." William T.”
― Alison McGhee

“Feel how tight my arms are around you?" he said. "This is how tight I'll be holding you. No matter where you go, or where I go, remember how tight I'm holding you." Memory doesn't fade. You don't forget. When you conjure something that happened, float it back up through time and space, it will happen again. When I am eighty years old and looking back on my life, I will be back in the haymow with Tom Miller, that night when he held me so tight.”
― Alison McGheecg

“We all walk around with a stone in our shoe, Younger." William T.”
― Alison McGhee

“I like to read books one after another. Immerse myself in a book, and then immerse myself in the next book, and just keep going until there aren't any more books left to swim in. That's why I hate when authors die. I cannot stand it. There will be no more books forthcoming from that person. Their future books died with them. In the past I have found a series of books and loved it so much that all I wanted to do was read and read and read those books for the rest of my life. Then I would find out that the author was dead. Had in fact been dead for many a year. This has happened to me several times.”
― Alison McGhee

“Stories are the way you look at the world. . . . stories are your salvation.”
― Alison McGhee, Shadow Baby

“If you know how to read, you know how forever. You can't unread.”
― Alison McGhee, Shadow Baby

“Air you breathe holds the breath of all things.”
― Alison McGhee, So Many Days

“Clara Winter," he said. "You are a word person and don't ever forget it."
He was right. He knew. He could tell. It's something that can be sensed. There's a difference between word-people and non-word-people.”
― Alison McGhee, Shadow Baby

“Books? Books are sacred. Books are to me what the host is to the priest, the oasis to the desert wanderer, the arrival of winged seraphim to a dying man.”
― Alison McGhee, Shadow Baby