“then they both turned away for a moment from the peppered wind. When” — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“History was easy: the past with all loss burned out of it, all sorrow worn out of it—all that was merely personal… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“The cold wind made it difficult to breathe, as if it could snatch your next breath before you had time to swallow… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“The day and time itself: late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?” — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“It was not the future they'd been objecting to, but the loss of the past. As if it was his fault that… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“It might have been the first time in my life I understood what an easy bond it was, to share a neighborhood… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Mr. Persichetti knew that six weeks before its time and with a good thirty-minute ride to the hospital once the ambulance came… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost.… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Some vestige of his race or of his sex made him think, whenever he looked out across the ocean: As it was… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“With her silence alone she held off, for a moment longer, the suggestion that the worst was over, the tree had fallen,… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Saw in her mind’s eye that delicious moment when Stan—a version of the piano player himself, when you thought about it—smiled the… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“It was as if he stopped time for them two weeks out of every year, cut them off from both the past… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“trimmed border of his hair. All that trying to be charming and trying to be demure and hoping to look attentive and… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
What makes a sentence, a phrase, a moment, or a scene delightful? Something about recognizing the truth in it, hearing the music… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“I suppose I've never set out to write a novel in which nothing happens . . . only to write a novel… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“She leaned heavily against the front door, put her hand on the doorknob and although her husband had said nothing of his… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Some vestige of his race or of his sex made him think, whenever he looked out across the ocean: As it was before me… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“If you want to see how far we have not come from the cave and the woods, from the lonely and dangerous days of… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“John Keane pressed his chest to the steering wheel as he put the key in the ignition, taking a deep breath as he did,… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“The fourth contraction seized her and suddenly she was perspiring. She heard herself cry out and then she heard the children’s voices like sparks… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“THE TINY SPIDERS that lived in the higher branches of the downed tree (which now meant the branches that lay on the other side… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
What makes a sentence, a phrase, a moment, or a scene delightful? Something about recognizing the truth in it, hearing the music in it,… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“Michael had slipped beyond the crest of the dune. Jacob was lying flat out now, on his stomach, his little men all before him,… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“Not a soul,” Mary Keane said to her husband, the wind lifting her words, tossing them gently back over her shoulder, the way it… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“There wasn’t a tear to be seen on the faces of the men and women in the street as the two of them walked… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“Mr. Persichetti knew that six weeks before its time and with a good thirty-minute ride to the hospital once the ambulance came (would it… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“Mike Shea became a medic during the war and was now married, working for Pfizer. To this day he can’t look at her straight.… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
As a writer, I'm too busy and worried to experience the delight while composing my own work, although, of course, I hope a reader… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
“Why not?” but without conviction, confirming for them both that this was a sudden impulse that most likely would not last out the afternoon.… — Alice McDermott Copy Share
