Annie Proulx Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

Their silence comfortable. Something unfolding. But what? Not love, which wrenched and wounded. Not love, which came only once.

Annie Proulx
We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.

Annie Proulx
In a knot of eight crossings, which is about the average-size knot, there are 256 different 'over-and-under' arrangements possible... Make only one change in this 'over and under' sequence and either an entirely different knot is made or no knot at all may result.

Annie Proulx
Quoyle, you got any maritime connections?' 'My grandfather was a sealer.' 'Jesus. You always come out at me out of left field.

Annie Proulx
He [Quoyle] did not want a boat, shied from the thought of water. Ashamed he could not swim, couldn't learn.

Annie Proulx
That was the stuff of other lives, he was waiting for his to begin. He got in the habit of walking around the trailer and asking aloud, "Who knows?" He said, "Who knows?" For no one knew. He meant, anything could happen. A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.

Annie Proulx
All stemmed from Quoyle's chief failure, a failure of normal appearance.

Annie Proulx
But the only rhyme he could summon for 'out' was 'sauerkraut,' which lacked poetic glory. He let it go. The right line would come in time. That was the thing about poetry. It crept up through the draws and coulees of the brain.

Annie Proulx
For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation. His middle initial was X. Face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork.

Annie Proulx
Quoyle large, white, stumbling along going nowhere

Annie Proulx
If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.

Annie Proulx
Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?

Annie Proulx
Quoyle, who spoke little himself, inspired talkers. His only skill in the game of life

Annie Proulx
And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

Annie Proulx
'Dad, are we scared?' said Sunshine. 'No, honey. It's an adventure.

Annie Proulx
Quoyle with regards to Petal, his wife, There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering... In another time, in another sex, she would have been Genghis Khan.

Annie Proulx
We run a car wreck photo every week, whether we have a car wreck or not. That's our golden rule.

Annie Proulx
There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.

Annie Proulx
Why do we weep in grief,' the aunt wondered. 'Dogs, deer, birds sufferent with dry eyes and in silence. The dumb suffering of animals. Probably a survival technique.

Annie Proulx
It was not until the next evening that he discovered he had a page from Leviticus stuck to his back.

Annie Proulx
The ocean twitched like a vast cloth spread over snakes.

Annie Proulx
All them things I don't know could get you killed if I come to know them

Annie Proulx
You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

Annie Proulx
And three lucky stones strung on a wire to keep the house safe.

Annie Proulx
Petal, like a persistent song phrase, like a few stubborn lines of verse memorized in childhood. The needle was stuck.

Annie Proulx