Michael Mewshaw > Quotes

“Personally I like going places where I don't speak the language, don't know anybody, don't know my way around and don't have any delusions that I'm in control. Disoriented, even frightened, I feel alive, awake in ways I never am at home.”
― Michael Mewshaw

“I was a distant father. I'd just go off and write. I did the thing that screws up kids more than anything else in America. I went and got myself a little bit famous.”
― Michael Mewshaw, The Lost Prince: A Search for Pat Conroy

“I'm not scared of dying. I'm scared of living on and on.”
― Michael Mewshaw, Lying With the Dead: A Novel

“I had a sudden premonition that this might be the night he drank himself to death. After he finished one bottle, he fumbled the porcelain decanter of single malt out of its velvet-lined box, hands shaking, fingers trembling. He barely managed to peel off the foil, then couldn’t unscrew the cap. I didn’t offer to help. I hoped he’d give up. In frustration, he bashed the bottle against the fireplace, cracking off the cap, and drank straight from its jagged neck. All this time he continued talking. Or tried to. He sounded strangely maudlin—strange, that is, for a man who, even in his cups, usually avoided self-pity. He conceded that he was lonely and grateful I had kept him company. A forlorn figure in his chair, the bottle tucked between his thighs, he reminded me of Gustave von Aschenbach in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. Tomorrow, I thought, he’ll be dead, and word will go out around the world. There’s no way he can survive this. Perhaps”
― Michael Mewshaw, Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal