David Todd McCarty

“Detail is the antidote to boredom, and tends to keep depression at bay.”
― Abigail Thomas, Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing

“One wonders, after reading a great many such firsthand accounts, if polar explorers were not somehow chosen for the empty and solemn splendor of their prose styles—or even if some eminent Victorians, examining their own prose styles, realized, perhaps dismayed, that from the look of it, they would have to go in for polar exploration.”
― Annie Dillard, The Annie Dillard Reader

“I know a couple who uses shopping to dispel an unyielding sadness that seems to overwhelm them day by day. Whenever their depression becomes more than they can bear, they buy new furniture for their living room. And it helps—for a while. But in due course the sadness engulfs them again, and they don’t know why. But I think I do. It’s because the furniture doesn’t fulfill a dream; it’s purely an accessory, an accoutrement, to their otherwise-empty lives.”
― Richard Bode, First You Have to Row a Little Boat: Reflections on Life & Living

“I’VE WRITTEN MEMOIR FOR YEARS now in spite of a poor memory. Maybe because of my poor memory.”
― Abigail Thomas, Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing