Lisa Alther Quotes

28 Sourced Quotes

The strength you've insisted on assigning to others is actually within yourself.

Lisa Alther
The requirements of romantic love are difficult to satisfy in the back seat of a Dodge Dart.

Lisa Alther
One didn't issue instructions to comets. Grown children did what they had to do, and parents could only grit their teeth and watch and pray for them to get through it.

Lisa Alther
Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.

Lisa Alther
Their civil discussions weren't interesting, and their interesting discussions weren't civil.

Lisa Alther
A snake will always be a snake, even if you put a chain around its neck and try to make it walk upright.

Lisa Alther
It was an old quandary for them. He needed sex in order to feel connected to her, and she needed to feel connected to him in order to enjoy sex.

Lisa Alther
If this was adulthood, the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that now she could eat dessert without eating her vegetables.

Lisa Alther
Inspiration never arrived when you were searching for it.

Lisa Alther
What a surprise to find you could shift the contents of your head like rearranging furniture in a room.

Lisa Alther
She had learnt... that it was impossible to discuss issues civilly with a person who insisted on referring to himself as 'we'.

Lisa Alther
That's the risk you take if you change: that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along.

Lisa Alther
The Sizemores are the laughing stock of wannabee genealogy. They claim Cherokee descent, but their paper trail shows them to be white.

Lisa Alther
I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic, I announced, resolutely parroting Miss Head.

Lisa Alther
Dying was apparently a weaning process; all the attachments to familiar people and objects had to be undone.

Lisa Alther
Depression was a very active state really. Even if you appeared to an observer to be immobilized, your mind was in a frenzy of paralysis. You were unable to function, but were actively despising yourself for it.

Lisa Alther
When she'd given birth to Jackie and Jason, she'd had no idea she'd spend her next twelve years scheduling — meals, rides, babysitters, dentists appointments, hockey practices. And juggling her work hours, and enduring the anxiety when everything fell through and the boys ended up alone.

Lisa Alther
Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you.

Lisa Alther
Successful parenting was like log rolling, and she'd often landed in the drink.

Lisa Alther
Two people sat talking in a small room for several weeks, and things started happening. They began thinking about each other; one would dream about the other; they copied each other's mannerisms. What was it really all about? She liked to think she had a firm hold on the reins at all times, but the truth was that often she was just along for the ride.

Lisa Alther
If you kept moving, you never had to mourn what you were leaving behind.

Lisa Alther
I wrote for 12 years and collected 250 rejection slips before getting any fiction published, so I guess outside reinforcement isn't all that important to me.

Lisa Alther
I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

Lisa Alther
One day, maybe she'd stick around to explore her own capacity for the dark, but at the moment all she wanted was a cheeseburger.

Lisa Alther
Clea was a woman who adored love. Hormones had always been her recreational drug of choice.

Lisa Alther
The human organism has only so much energy at its disposal. If you divert a great deal of it into any one channel, you can expect the others to collapse or atrophy. If you squander your vital energies on your emotional life, as you have been doing, plan to be physically and mentally bankrupt, as it were.

Lisa Alther
Once again she decided not to decide. She preferred being compelled into her decisions.

Lisa Alther
The French would eat anything that couldn't outrun them.

Lisa Alther