Maile Meloy famous quotes

At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.
-- Maile Meloy

#Loneliness #Simplicity #Nerves

His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him.
-- Maile Meloy

#Heart #Years #Firsts

The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?
-- Maile Meloy

#Fool #Teeth #Grit

To be a kid is to be invisible and to listen, and to interpret things that aren't necessarily meant for you to hear--because how else do you find out about the world?
-- Maile Meloy

#Kids #World #Invisible

Diabetes is passed that way -- over and down, like a knight in chess.
-- Maile Meloy

#Knights #Chess #Way

I settled in with The Uninvited Guests thinking I knew what kind of Edwardian pleasures were in store: the fraught dinner party in an endangered, rambling house, the feuding family, the rich suitor, the disruptive visitors. The novel has all of those delightful things, but it also defied every one of my expectations. I saw none of it coming. I read it in one breathless sitting, and finished wanting to give it to everyone I know.
-- Maile Meloy

#Party #Thinking #Giving

When they started to drain a swamp where birds and fish had lived, for a new housing development down the road from his apartment, Steven watched the protests and the preparations with interest. The bird people were furious, the developers unmovable, and Steven was filled with relief that the fight wasn't his. Nothing here was his... He thought there should have been something sad about how little he was tied up with the place, but instead it felt like freedom. He was free because it wasn't his water here, and they weren't his fish.
-- Maile Meloy

#Fighting #People #Water

The role of the human brain was to rationalize suffering.
-- Maile Meloy

#Brain #Suffering #Roles

Dim loneliness came imperceivably into the fields and he turned back. The birds piped oddly; some wind was caressing the higher foliage, turning it all one way, the way home. Telegraph poles ahead looked like half-used pencils; the small cross on the steeple glittered with a sharp and shapely permanence.

None of the prophets old, So lofty or so bold! No form of danger shakes his dauntless breast; In loneliness sublime He dares confront the time, And speak the truth, and give the world no rest No kingly threat can cowardize his breath, He with majestic step goes forth to meet his death.

Maybe a first love exists to reaffirm the best parts of yourself, the choices you made when you didn't worry about the consequences. Maybe a first love exists to remind you to be brave in the moment, to stand up for your feelings, instead of shrinking back in the face of potential loneliness.

The loneliness caused by not hearing Ren's voice... I felt it deep in the night. I felt it deeper than anyone else. Even now at times I look back. In this ordinary life without Ren, I think my life with him was like a dream. Especially on a snowy night like this. On a night as cold as this. Someone keep this guy warm for me, please.

By sowing frugality we reap liberty, a golden harvest.

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.

The criterion of simplicity requires that the minimum number of assumptions be postulated.

Simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.

One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

I think any movie star who refuses autographs has a hell of a nerve