That afternoon he told me that the difference between human beings and animals was that human beings were able to dream while awake. He said the purpose of books was to permit us to exercise that faculty. Art, he said,… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
“Art, he said, was a controlled madness...He said that books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.” — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
But what struck me was the book-madness of the place--books lay scattered across the unmade bed and the top of a battered-looking desk, books… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
I’m pleased by anything in myself that strikes me as not myself. — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
“For what is genius, I ask you, but the capacity to be obsessed? ...We have all been geniuses, you and I; but sooner or… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
“A story with a single ending seems to us a bare and diminished thing, like a tree with a single branch; and each ending… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
His ambition was to insert his dreams into the world, and if they were the wrong dreams, then he would dream them in solitude. — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
“... now and again we would happen to step out of the familiar universe into a sudden sharp shock of sweetly scented air, sudden… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
“Martin thought of the iron El trestles winding and stretching across the city, of department store windows and hotel lobbies, of electric elevators and… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
“Then solar systems, galaxies, supernovas, infinite space itself will become elements of a final masterwork--a never-ending festival, a celestial amusement park in which every… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen. — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
“... it is the purpose of this history to trace not the mere outlines of a life but the inner plan, not the external… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
“Others saw in the trend still another instance of a disturbing tendency in the American suburb: the longing for withdrawal, for self-enclosure, for expensive… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate for our dreams. — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
“I thought of myself, in those days, as someone in disguise—beneath the obedient son, beneath the straight-A student, the agreeable well-brought-up boy with his… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
I saw that I was in danger of becoming ordinary, and I understood that from now on I would have to be vigilant. — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
