Wally Lamb

“Visualize your solutions. Picture an answer to the problem. Then make the picture real.”

— Wally Lamb

“You know what 'Dolores' means? It's Latin, means sadness. Our Lady of Sorrow. Why are you so sad?”

— Wally Lamb

“Vicarious traumatization. It can happen to those who bear secondary witness to the traumas of others.”

— Wally Lamb

“This was what could happen to you: you could end up this far from where you were going”

— Wally Lamb

“I understand there was some controversy about the coroner’s ruling concerning Josephus Jones’s”

— Wally Lamb

Love stories are probably all Ive ever been able to write or want to write.

— Wally Lamb

I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.

— Wally Lamb

People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.

— Wally Lamb

I thought about how love was always the thing that did that - smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you…

— Wally Lamb

“Your twin brother is, as you said, an abandoned house. If no one is home, then someone is missing. So you grieve.”

— Wally Lamb

Fiction writing is a strange business when you think about it. You sit down and weave a network of lies to explore…

— Wally Lamb

Love grows from the rich foam of forgiveness, mongrels make good dogs, and the evidence of God exists in the roundness of…

— Wally Lamb

“One thing I’ve learned in my program is that guilt is a wasted emotion, you know? Look back on the past but…

— Wally Lamb

“You think it's worth it? That we're over there for the right reasons?" He shrugged. "Politics is a luxury you can't necessarily…

— Wally Lamb

First I laughed my way through Elinor Lipman's book of political tweets. Then I put my ear to the ground and listened…

— Wally Lamb

Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That's what life's all about. Climbing out…

— Wally Lamb

“All I’m saying, Dad, is that I accept that I don’t know. But I have faith that my Lord and Savior does,…

— Wally Lamb

“I pulled my hand away. It felt numb and oversized, a paw.”

— Wally Lamb

I am a plodder, I make an appointment with my computer everyday and I have no idea where I am going.

— Wally Lamb

The roundness of life's design may be a sign that there is a presence beyond ourselves.

— Wally Lamb

“So much for ‘Give us your tired and hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,”

— Wally Lamb

But I think this: that whatever prices I've paid, whatever sorrows I shoulder, well, I have blessings, too. Not just my family…

— Wally Lamb

Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.

— Wally Lamb

“It was a matter of perspective, I began to see. The whole world was crazy; I'd flattered myself by assuming I was…

— Wally Lamb

“For a quick moment, I saw Grandma as she saw herself: a decent woman whom God, for unfathomable reasons, had chosen to…

— Wally Lamb

“I know it's a crock of shit. I ain't offering you happily-ever-after. I'm offering you... happily-maybe-sometimes-ever-after. Sort of. You know, with warts…

— Wally Lamb

“Just don't ever let it happen to you, Dolores. Let people just shit all over you. Don't you ever become some man's…

— Wally Lamb

“Who gets the change?" the clerk asked. "You or...your fella?" Oh, he's not my boyfriend," I said. "He's my mother.”

— Wally Lamb

“Once you left Easterly, you saw the world was full of these people: ticket sellers, snack bar clerks. They assumed they were…

— Wally Lamb

“Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and be smart enough to know the difference. Viveca comes downstairs first and heads…

— Wally Lamb

“As my father talked, tears dripped down the side of his face like candle wax. The sight shocked me; until that moment,…

— Wally Lamb

“Making the decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.”

— Wally Lamb

So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before…

— Wally Lamb

Its the most breathtakingly ironic things about living: the fact that we are all-identical twins included-alone. Singular. And yet what we seek-what…

— Wally Lamb

“She flinched when I did it, and that involuntary response of hers satisfied me in some small, cheap way. I never claimed…

— Wally Lamb

“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there.…

— Wally Lamb

“Being in your mid-thirties brought benefits, I reminded myself. You began to appreciate tidiness, smallness, things in their place. This is the…

— Wally Lamb

“If I could just write it down in a piece of paper, then maybe she could get a decent night's sleep, eat…

— Wally Lamb

The point is this: that the stream of memory may lead you to the river of understanding. And understanding, in turn, may…

— Wally Lamb

“You are a steward of the pain and injustices people have visited upon you. Or, if you prefer we could call you…

— Wally Lamb