Ann Packer > Quotes

“How Much Do We Owe People We Love?”
― Ann Packer

“A broken heart can masquerade as a cold one.”
― Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade

“It paid barely a living wage, but he stayed with it—gradually and in the end gratefully arriving at the point in life when you understand there are no great changes ahead.”
― Ann Packer

“Bill supposed that for every child there was a defining age, a fixed reference point in relation to which his parents would always view him; whereas the child’s own truest self would always be the present one.”
― Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade

“You know what ‘congregate’ means? It’s from the Latin. ‘Greg’ means herd. ‘Con’ means with. We’re with our herd.”
― Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade

“. . . if it was your fault, then you weren't powerless--you weren't at the mercy of stuff just happening."
"Your always going to be at thee mercy of stuff just happening, no matter what.”
― Ann Packer

“Lonely is a funny thing," she said slowly. "It's almost like another person. After a while, it'll keep you company if you'll let it.”
― Ann Packer, The Dive from Clausen's Pier

“Such is the lot of the narcissist's child, to inherit her parent's umbrage over the world's indifference.”
― Ann Packer, Swim Back to Me

“Sarabeth wondered at the sheer energy it must have taken for her mother to be dissatisfied by so much. Her psyche was like a huge grid of mousetraps, set to spring at the lightest touch. There were traps for Sarabeth's father,traps for Sarabeth. The biggest trap, though, was the grid itself,the trap of being Lorelei.”
― Ann Packer, Songs Without Words

“She was one of those people who seemed to regard busyness as a contest you could win.
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― Ann Packer, Songs Without Words

“The others received this as it should be received: lovingly”
― Ann Packer, Some Bright Nowhere

“Matrimony, he began to think, was a cure for an illness he hadn’t known he had.”
― Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade

“Lake Mendota was a rippled silver, like a vast piece of silk spread out but had not yet been smoothed.”
― Ann Packer, The Dive from Clausen's Pier

“She and Dan were on the patio, wrapped in blankets against the cool evening air. Sasha and I were at the dining room table playing Scrabble, and Peter lay on the floor reading comic books.”
― Ann Packer, Swim Back to Me

“Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease,”
― Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade

“you felt wounded when you thought maybe you deserved it.”
― Ann Packer, Some Bright Nowhere

“right? But no. Don’t hitchhike, the driver”
― Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade

“some bright nowhere of broad fields and sunlight that was my idea of heaven”
― Ann Packer, Some Bright Nowhere

“How do people do it, pry themselves from their pasts? “Pry” makes it sound dramatic, but it isn’t. I wish I could say my life in the natural world began with a transformative experience: like the fishing weekend with my father, only successful. An epiphanic trip to the mountains, a hike along a rushing river that taught me how I wanted to live. But that’s not how it happened. The course of true progress is boring. You don’t just suddenly become an outdoorsman, just as you don’t just suddenly become assertive and independent, ridding yourself forever of your shabby victim rags. It’s incremental. Think of that frog, the one in Karl’s picture. There wasn’t a single moment when he passed into maturity, a single instant when an observer could cry, “Look, he’s a frog now!” No, it happened slowly, beginning with four tiny bumps, four promises of the legs that would widen the world for him beyond anything he could conceive of in his watery tadpole dreams.”
― Ann Packer, Swim Back to Me

“Meaning bad isn't the issue. Meaning you do what you do. Not without consequences for other people, of course, sometimes very grave ones. But it's not very helpful to regard your choices as a series of right or wrong moves. They don't define you as much as you define them”
― Ann Packer, The Dive from Clausen's Pier

“being mindful about parenting was better than just automatically doing what your parents did!”
― Ann Packer, Some Bright Nowhere

“Lonely is a funny thing,' she said slowly. 'It's almost like another person. After a while, it'll keep you company if you'll let it”
― Ann Packer, The Dive from Clausen's Pier

“What was it about fashion? Since arriving in New York I’d been nurturing this fascination, this compulsion to look at clothes. It was less about beauty than about transformation. Who would I be in a turquoise paisley slip dress and beaded sandals?”
― Ann Packer, The Dive From Clausen's Pier

“What was caretaking, anyway? Could you separate caretaking as a whole from the sum of its parts? Helping, soothing, driving, phoning, cooking, listening, tending, waiting, learning, remembering, deciding, forgoing. A lot of forgoing.”
― Ann Packer, Some Bright Nowhere