READING NOVELS

'Life being so terribly short, and without guarantees against disaster, it is something that by picking up a book what we know to be true we can place in the widest possible context, and take the world in through eyes and hearts that are not our own. We have this always accessible form of reincarnation.'

William Maxwell, The Writer at Illusionist: Uncollected & Unpublished Work, p.106.

THE EFFECT OF BULLYING ON A BULLY

'Considering the multitude of things that happen in any one person's life, it seems fairly unlikely that those little boys remembered the incident for very long. It was an introduction to what was to come. And cruelty could never again take them totally by surprise. But I have remembered it. I have remembered it because it was the moment I learned that I was not to be trusted.' 

William Maxwell, 'With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge' in Billie Dyer and Other Stories, p.68. 

OPPOSITES UNDERSTAND

'...opposites often instinctively understand each other...'
William Maxwell, 'My Father's Friends' in Billy Dyer and Other Stories, p.80. 

WHERE FEAR DRIVES US

'"We all live in the hands of God."

"I tell myself that every time I'm really frightened. Unfortunately that's the only time I do think it."' 

William Maxwell, 'The French Scarecrow' in Over By the River and other stories, p.122. 

THE PATTERNS OF LOVE

'Arnold, after yawning twice, got up and went into the house. Stretched out on the bed in his room, with the Venetian blinds closed, he began to compare the life of the Talbots with his own well-ordered but childless and animalless life in town. Everywhere they go, he thought, they leave tracks behind them, like people walking in the snow. Paths crisscrossing, lines that are perpetually meeting: the mother's loving pursuit of the youngest, the man's love for his daughter, the dog's love for the man, the two boys;' preoccupation with each other. Wheels and diagrams, Arnold said to himself. The patterns of love.' 

William Maxwell, 'The Patterns of Love' in Over by the River  and Other Stories, p.81. 

DEATH

'When I was a young man one of my mother's friends said to me, "I have never become reconciled to her death." I thought, how strange. It doesn't seem so now. One doesn't want to become reconciled.'

William Maxwell, What there is to Say we have Said, p.402. 

LONELINESS

'There is also the matter of living alone. If you live with somebody you are saved (often by petty irritation) from having to confront despair.'

William Maxwell, What there is to Say we have Said, p.394.

CHANGE

'I suppose that is where we are coming to, but at the moment when we arrive there for good and all, I hope I will have managed to be somewhere else.'

William Maxwell, What there is to say we have said, p.212.

FUNERALS

'...I now find that a funeral is not the dreadful travesty I used to think, but one of the moments when everybody, quite simply, agrees to live on a plane of reality.' 

William Maxwell, What there is to say we have said, p.134.

AGE

'The key to age is patience; and the key to patience is unfortunately age, which cannot be hurried, which takes time...'

William Maxwell, 'What Every Boy Should Know' in Over by The River and Other Stories, p.90.