"A book tour is, first and foremost, an exercise in humility."

“The world was a cruder, more vulgar place than the one I had known. This was the language required to live in it, I supposed.”
Alice McDermott

Source : Alice McDermott (2013). “Someone”, p.153, A&C Black

“We turned onto the last landing. Going out with this guy, I thought, would involve a lot of silly laughter, some wit--the buzz of his whispered wisecracks in my ear. But there would be as well his willingness to reveal, or more his inability to conceal, that he had been silently rehearsing my name as he climbed the stairs behind me. There would be his willingness to bestow upon me the power to reassure him. He would trust me with his happiness.”
Alice McDermott

Source : Alice McDermott (2013). “Someone”, p.163, A&C Black

“We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!”
Alice McDermott

Source : "20 Questions Every Woman Should Ask Herself". The Oprah Magazine Interview, www.oprah.com. April, 2014.

“The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we're gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves, and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.”
Alice McDermott

Source : "20 Questions Every Woman Should Ask Herself". www.oprah.com. April, 2014.

“A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.”
Alice McDermott

Source : Alice McDermott (2013). “A Bigamist's Daughter”, p.82, A&C Black