Joan Silber > Quotes

“A story is already over before we hear it. That is how the teller knows what it means.”
― Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes

“If you saw through everything, it made it hard to figure out what to do with yourself.”
― Joan Silber, Fools: Stories

“[S]torytelling, in ancient and modern practice, is always a contemplation of the experience of time passing. A story depends on things not standing still, on the built-in condition of impermanence.”
― Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes

“Slowed time is -- or should be -- a way of pointing to what's important.”
― Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes

“This is fictional time, where events play out and possibilities are exhausted, so that meaning can emerge.”
― Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes

“People always went for the romantic interpretation; you couldn’t blame them for that. What they felt most strongly seemed most true. But other forces were operating in the world.”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“A story is entirely determined by what portion of time it chooses to narrate.”
― Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes

“Fierce loyalty. That's how the Kurds survived for two and a half thousand years while the Hitties and the Phrygians died out. Communal Loyalty.”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“Length is weight in fiction, pretty much.”
― Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes

“But people often wanted payment for what they only wished they’d done.”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“She wasn’t old—sixties weren’t old nowadays—why was she talking about death?”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“Nobody talked as much as Kiki did about the possibility of fairness.”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“You don't know what you're going to be faithful to in this world, do you? It was true I didn't have what other people had, I knew that, and yet I couldn't think of a single other life I envied - no, I couldn't - though I knew better than to try to get anyone to believe it.”
― Joan Silber, Fools: Stories

“he was in a museum of immaculate dust - and nothing was exactly gone”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“So, in the end, we were hypocrites for kindness. Both of us. Standing with my bouquet of orange blossoms, I thought: I'm happy but I'm in disguise. But probably many people feel that at their weddings.”
― Joan Silber, Fools: Stories

“Get over yourself - You are not the center of the universe.'

'Understand that life itself (and emotions) are impermanent.”
― Joan Silber

“Get over yourself - You're not the only pebble on the beach.'

'Understand that life itself (and emotions) are impermanent.”
― Joan Silber

“He sent Leah a text--*truck fine miss u like always april too all my lv*--and none of it was a lie. There were burning truths in that message.”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“The thing about being young was, you didn't know what lay ahead.”
― Joan Silber, Mercy

“I could picture him gray and gaunt, looking out from an armchair, braving the worst. I knew how he’d be; I knew him. He’d be glad to see me by then, more than glad. I could feel myself wishing it were that time now.”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“I probably couldn't have said there was one single worst thing—movies had plots like that more than life did.”
― Joan Silber, Mercy: A Novel

“minding your own business was not exactly an ethical principal.”
― Joan Silber, Mercy

“His best moment was when he walked up the majestic stairway to the second floor of the Met; he loved the glorious spaces of old exhibition halls. Not that they knew about old here, with buildings always being blasted and rebuilt higher. How did people in this city keep track of themselves, with so much coming at them at once?”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“It was one of the mysteries of modern life, what happened to old love.”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“She understood very well that when you took a good look under a clear, hard light, the world was a fucked-up hellhole. Most people knew this, she’d known this, but nobody wanted to think about it all the time. It didn’t pay to forget for too long.”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“There's no justice in who dies”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“I liked my floaty, superior life more than I could have admitted. I liked the remote spaces I was settling into. I liked looking down from above — the calm of it. I kept this preference to myself. Mostly.”
― Joan Silber

“Obviously, I had talked too much, recounted too long a list. By that gauge, the years since puberty were peaks and valleys and stretches of incoherent landscape.”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“And how could the Internet bring him to her, if he wasn’t showing up on his own two feet?”
― Joan Silber, Improvement

“He had never lied to me, as far as I knew. But did I know anything?”
― Joan Silber