Michael Gruber > Quotes

“It's part of what we call the Shadow, all the dark parts of us we can't face. It's the thing that, if we don't deal with it, eventually poisons our lives.”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son

“As a matter of fact I had a terribly traumatic childhood. But afterward I sort of reraised myself.”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son

“Professors go batty too, perhaps more often than other people, although owing to their profession, their madness is less often remarked. ”
― Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows

“There are three kind of history. The first is what really happened and that is forever lost. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened and that is 90 percent of the history in books.”
― Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows

“The problem with evil people is that they can see only evil in others. It is one of the worst curses of being evil, that you can no longer experience good. ”
― Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows

“But it turns out that people who are grounded and secure don't change much under stress. That's what being grounded means.”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son

“It is an animus, she decides, the representation of the Logos in the female, as the anima is the representation of Eros in the male. In its negative aspect it is opinionated, conventional, banal, self-righteous, argumentative . . . In its positive aspect, it conveys spirit, feistiness, the capacity for reflection and self-knowledge, the capacity to handle philosophical and religious ideas at the higher levels.”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son

“There are life events that can destroy the personality, which is a lot more fragile than most people imagine, constructed as it is from bits provided by others in the most haphazard way. People can be torn down to the core, "shattered," as the expression goes, and then they seek sleep. And dreams, which provide the ground for the construction of a new and more integrated self. Providing there's a core, and providing they're willing to do the work.”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son

“He said there are three kinds of history. The first is what really happened, and that is lost forever. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened, and that is 90 percent of the history in books.”
― Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows

“...envy is the one deadly sin that no American can ever admit to...”
― Michael Gruber, Tropic of Night

“Thus, although life is by and large unthrilling, when we do find ourselves in the sort of situation upon which thrillers dote we cannot really experience it, because our imaginations are occupied by the familiar tropes of popular fiction. And the result of this is a kind of dull bafflement, and the sense that whatever it is cannot really be happening. We actually think that phrase: this can’t be happening to me.”
― Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows

“Farid, you are keeping a hawk; don't expect her to lay eggs like a chicken.”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son

“When I got to the States and started going to an American high school, which I did for an extremely short time, I thought everyone around me was insane, the way they talked about their parents. I thought the parents were insane too, the way they handled their kids, like every request they made was a bargain they weren't sure would be kept. That little whiny tone at the end of every statement: "Be home by ten, okay?”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son

“You look at us and you see oppression; we see stability and harmony. You see corruption; we see ties of family, friendship, and mutual support. You see feudalism, we see mutual responsibility. You see the oppression of women, we see the defense of modesty.”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son

“In my country, politics is tragic, and all our great politicians have been tragic figures, either saints or demons. You, clearly, are one of the saints. But no one expects real change, because the nation reflects the human condition, original sin, call it what you like. There will always be a chingón and a chingada, and the only question is which men fall into which group. In your country, on the other hand, you believe that change is possible, and so your politics is comic. All your politicians are therefore clowns.”
― Michael Gruber, The Return

“Does it matter, when you read, if the person who wrote still lives?”
― Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows

“Well, we start with this outrageous idea that the ground of being, existence itself, is a person, and that this person is intimately concerned with each of our lives and desires us to turn our hearts toward him. Once you accept that level of insanity—or faith, as we prefer to call it—then it makes perfect sense to try to discern what God’s purpose is for your life through a disciplined process of prayer and self-examination, discernment, as we say.”
― Michael Gruber, The Return

“Don’t you see you are a corpse too after what was done to you and the true life is waiting for you to pick it up.”
― Michael Gruber, Valley of Bones

“I’ll lay a bet,” said Sancho, “that before long there won’t be a tavern, roadside inn, hostelry, or barber’s shop where the story of our doings won’t be painted up; but I’d like it painted by the hand of a better painter than painted these.” “Thou art right, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for this painter is like Orbaneja, a painter there was at Ubeda, who when they asked him what he was painting, used to say, ‘Whatever it may turn out’; and if he chanced to paint a cock he would write under it, ‘This is a cock,’ for fear they might think it was a fox.” —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote”
― Michael Gruber, The Forgery of Venus

“God really wants to talk to us. He tried Scripture, he tries the still small voice, but we’re all unbelievers now, so he mainly speaks to us through a conspiracy of accidents.”
― Michael Gruber, Valley of Bones

“Having talent and not putting it on the line is just like not having it and desperately wanting to be recognized”
― Michael Gruber

“Yes, well, irony is no protection when you can feel the breeze from his scythe on your skin and hear the rustle of his wings.”
― Michael Gruber, The Return

“They talk about adrenaline, but Marder knew it was much more than adrenaline; it was a mystical cocktail that comes only from this one act, from killing men at the risk of yourself dying, a Pleistocene inheritance, disgusting and marvelous at the same time. Sports, even violent sports, were just a pale shadow of this. Why they’d never abolish war.”
― Michael Gruber, The Return

“They like to get away with stuff, and they want a small group of players to know it too. Shooting drug dealers and taking their cash, inventing evidence, lying to make a case. They like the wink, they like thinking they’re inside something and everyone else is on the outside looking in. Hell, you’re the psychologist, you explain it. But it has”
― Michael Gruber, Valley of Bones

“Who can free himself from achievementAnd from fame,Descend and be lostAmid the masses of men?He will flow like the Tao, unseen.Such is the perfect man: His boat is empty.”
― Michael Gruber, Valley of Bones

“I've dreamed again of being in hell, vast cliffs with eyes, iron streets populated with gargoyles, half-dressed harpies, and in the streets chariots going of themselves, spitting the stench of pitch and sulphur”
― Michael Gruber, The Forgery of Venus

“Young Charles Dickens started out as a court reporter, and scholars believe that this experience formed the sense of the human drama evident in his novels. Besides which, those novels are nearly all about crimes, mainly of the white-collar type.”
― Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows

“coats every surface. The heat builds up and”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son

“anglophiliac”
― Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows

“Tis a penny-tuppence businesse withal, emplaced curiouslie betwixt the bawds and the bears, of no consequence a thynge of ayre and shadowes.”
― Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows