Elizabeth McCracken Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch, the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of the sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins.

Elizabeth McCracken
Unrequited love–plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing–turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn't want, couldn't use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness.

Elizabeth McCracken
The cure for unhappiness is happiness,
I don't care what anyone says.

Elizabeth McCracken
And while I was not an admirer of people in the specific, I liked them in the abstract. It is only the execution of the idea that disappoints.

Elizabeth McCracken
In reference works, as in sin, omission is as bad as willful misbehavior.

Elizabeth McCracken
It's a happy life, but someone is missing. It's a happy life, and someone is missing.

Elizabeth McCracken
Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.

Elizabeth McCracken
After most deaths, I imagine, the awfulness lies in how everything's changed….there's a hole. It's person-shaped and it follows you everywhere…. For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We'd been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life.

Elizabeth McCracken
As for me, I believe that if there's a God - and I am as neutral on the subject as is possible - then the most basic proof of His existence is black humor. What else explains it, that odd, reliable comfort that billows up at the worst moments, like a beautiful sunset woven out of the smoke over a bombed city.

Elizabeth McCracken
Engagements — they are like a prayer before eating, best quick.

Elizabeth McCracken
Truthfully, this is the fabric of all my fantasies: love shown not by a kiss or a wild look or a careful hand but by a willingness for research. i don't dream of someone who understands me immediately, who seems to have known me my entire life, who says, i know me too. i want someone keen to learn my own strange organization, amazed at what's revealed; someone who asks, and then what, and then what?

Elizabeth McCracken
Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.

Elizabeth McCracken
Fire is a speed reader, which is why the ignorant burn books: fire races through pages, takes care of all the knowledge, and never bores you with a summary.

Elizabeth McCracken
Librarian like Stewardess, Certified Public Accountant, Used Car Salesman is one of those occupations that people assume attract a certain deformed personality.

Elizabeth McCracken