Alice LaPlante > Quotes

“Yes, Halloween excites me. That whole time of year, autumn, I find exhilarating. A passionate season. The others are so bland. In the fall, you see opportunities for change. Real change. Possibilities present themselves. None of the renewal and redemption cliches of spring. No. Something darker and more primal and more important than that.”
― Alice LaPlante

“People think it's just forgetting your keys, she says. Or the words for things. But there are the personality changes. The mood swings. The
hostility and even violence. Even from the gentlest person in the world. You lose the person you love. And you are left with the shell... And you are expected to go on loving them even when they are no longer there. You are supposed to be loyal. It’s not
that other people expect it. It’s that you expect it of yourself. And you long for it to be over soon.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“the secret of happy marriage: not honesty, not forgiveness, but acceptance that is a kind of respect for the other's right to make mistakes.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“You learn, you grieve, you forgive, or at least you accept.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“When thinking over one's life, it's the extreme moments that stand out. The peaks and the valleys. He was one of the highest peaks. In some ways looming larger than James. If James was a central mountain in the landscape of my life, then this other was a pinnacle of a different sort. Higher, sharper. You couldn't build upon its fragile precipices. But the view was spectacular.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“Sometimes you want the outside world to match your interior reality, you said to James once, trying to explain why you loved thunderstorms. Another boom overhead and a streak of lightning on the right. Awesome, says the taxi driver, and catching your eye in the rearview mirror, he smiles.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”
― Alice LaPlante, A Circle of Wives

“But to forgive, something has to touch you personally. This hasn’t touched me. That’s why I stopped believing in God. Who could worship someone that narcissistic, who takes everything anyone does as a personal affront?”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“some things shouldn’t be scrutinized too closely. Some mysteries are only rendered, not solved.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“Flannery O'Connor said that a good story "resisted paraphrase”
― Alice LaPlante, The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Writing Fiction and Nonfiction

“Anybody can become angry—that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”
― Alice LaPlante, A Circle of Wives

“That’s why I stopped believing in God. Who could worship someone that narcissistic, who takes everything anyone does as a personal affront? You”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“find that it often takes more courage to stop doing something you despise than to continue blindly along the wrong path. You usually save yourself, and others, a lot of grief by acknowledging your failure and moving”
― Alice LaPlante, A Circle of Wives

“Marriages should be transparent, she says. They must withstand the glare of full sunlight.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“En la mayoría de los casos dejas puertas abiertas. Puentes sin quemar. No aceptas casos imposibles. Te aseguras de tener una estrategia de huida. En este caso, no había ninguna.”
― Alice LaPlante, No recuerdo si lo hice

“I am a visitor from another planet, and the natives are not friendly.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“A veces, las cosas pequeñas bastan.”
― Alice LaPlante, No recuerdo si lo hice

“En otoño ves oportunidades de cambio. Cambio de verdad. Las posibilidades se presentan solas. Nada que ver con los clichés de renovación y redención de la primavera. No. Algo más oscuro, más fundamental y más importante que eso.”
― Alice LaPlante, No recuerdo si lo hice

“You don't get emotional over a hand. A hand is a collection of thoughts.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“Trust does matter. Betrayal is a serious act.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“Busied my mind and body but emotionally descended into despair.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“But ambition is not success. It’s something else. It’s a striving, not an achieving.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“schadenfreude”
― Alice LaPlante, A Circle of Wives

“Didn’t someone once say that that is the embodiment of madness? Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different effect?”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“funny—well, not funny, but naive—for people to think that just because there’s been a split all emotional connection is broken.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“Sí, es mejor quemar el puente y evitar que se pueda cruzar y recruzar hasta que mi corazón se rinda de puro agotamiento.”
― Alice LaPlante, No recuerdo si lo hice

“It means that when it’s important enough to you, when it comes to protecting yourself against some intolerable consequence, you’re like the rest of us mortals.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“¿Qué es el perdón sino la capacidad para aceptar lo que alguien ha hecho sin echárselo en cara?”
― Alice LaPlante, No recuerdo si lo hice

“And he can take up a lot of psychic space.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind

“No apologies are necessary because no apologies will be accepted. None would be acceptable. You betrayed my trust.”
― Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind