Sense of place Quotes by Brian Doyle

“I am no heroic figure, but a man like any other, capable of selfish and selfless at once, of light and dark, courage and cravenness; all men are two men, always at war with each other, isn’t that so? We don masks, we perform parts, we adopt personas, but we are never one sort of man, and not another. Even…

— Brian Doyle

“I began to wonder if he was not very consciously and deliberately choosing particular chapters of his life to tell, in order to tell me other things, perhaps --- about the nature and power of stories, about how decisions not only reflect but create character, about how stories actually shape our lives; could it be that the words we choose…

— Brian Doyle

“He is only one of a million no, a billion stories you could tell about the living beings on just this side of the mountain. The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in a single square foot of dirt and air and water, then we could tell in a hundred years. The…

— Brian Doyle

“One thing I remember with amazement about Chicago is that everyone knew everything before it was splayed lurid and naked in public; you never saw a city so filled with knowing as Chicago then and probably now; but for all the sure knowledge that the mayor was a thief of epic proportion and the state senator on the take, the…

— Brian Doyle

“When I was a kid I thought that the biggest moments in life would be trumpeted and highlighted and italicized somehow, that you would know when they were coming and could get your feet set to brace for them, and you would know they were upon you, and make a satisfactory effort to memorialize and celebrate them, but it turns…

— Brian Doyle

“You cannot edit your life, and even if I was today offered the chance to never meet her, and so not leave the city I loved, I would decline, for life is a verb, life swerves and lurches no matter how cautious and careful your driving, and I would not be who I am, surrounded by those I love most…

— Brian Doyle

“So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end -- not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of…

— Brian Doyle

“...you could see the man being formed, and kew the man to be your good and true friend, as long as life - the sort of man you could come to, at any hour of the day or night, wherever he chose to make his abode, and there ask him for help, and his help would be given freely and…

— Brian Doyle

“Our hearts are not pure: our hearts are filled with need and greed as much as with love and grace, and we wrestle with our hearts all the time. The wrestling is who we are. How we wrestle is who we are. What we want to be is never what we are. Not yet. Maybe that's why we have these…

— Brian Doyle