--- title: "4 Ten years Quotes By Alice McDermott" description: "4 Ten years quotes by Alice McDermott. Plus more from Alice McDermott and more Ten years sayings from other authors." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/62a/alice-mcdermott-1961_ten-years_mike-shea-became-a-medic-during-the-war_184460.jpg" --- > [“Mike Shea became a medic during the war and was now married, working for Pfizer. To this day he can’t look at…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/mike-shea-became-a-medic-during-the-war-and-was-now-married-working/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/62a/alice-mcdermott-1961_ten-years_mike-shea-became-a-medic-during-the-war_184460.jpg) > [“He folded back the hem of her housedress. Peeled the wet underpants from her skin and moved them down over her pale…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/he-folded-back-the-hem-of-her-housedress-peeled-the-wet-underpants/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/756/alice-mcdermott-1961_beautiful-woman_he-folded-back-the-hem-of-her-housedress_437196.jpg) > [“She shifted again, leaning her weight onto one thigh and then the other as the baby offered its own counterbalance. She moved…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/she-shifted-again-leaning-her-weight-onto-one-thigh-and-then-the/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/366/alice-mcdermott-1961_ten-years_she-shifted-again-leaning-her-weight-ont_846042.jpg) > [“Once, ten years ago, at a Sunday-afternoon party in some apartment that she remembered now as being labyrinthine, although it probably had…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/once-ten-years-ago-at-a-sunday-afternoon-party-in-some-apartment-that/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/599/alice-mcdermott-1961_gaze_once-ten-years-ago-at-a-sunday-afternoon_2573067.jpg) ## Other authors on Ten years ## More by Alice McDermott > [“Some vestige of his race or of his sex made him think, whenever he looked out across the ocean: As it was before me…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/some-vestige-of-his-race-or-of-his-sex-made-him-think-whenever-he/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“If you want to see how far we have not come from the cave and the woods, from the lonely and dangerous days of…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/if-you-want-to-see-how-far-we-have-not-come-from-the-cave-and-the/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“John Keane pressed his chest to the steering wheel as he put the key in the ignition, taking a deep breath as he did,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/john-keane-pressed-his-chest-to-the-steering-wheel-as-he-put-the-key/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/the-fourth-contraction-seized-her-and-suddenly-she-was-perspiring-she/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“THE TINY SPIDERS that lived in the higher branches of the downed tree (which now meant the branches that lay on the other side…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/the-tiny-spiders-that-lived-in-the-higher-branches-of-the-downed-tree/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [What makes a sentence, a phrase, a moment, or a scene delightful? Something about recognizing the truth in it, hearing the music in it,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/what-makes-a-sentence-a-phrase-a-moment-or-a-scene-delightful/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“Michael had slipped beyond the crest of the dune. Jacob was lying flat out now, on his stomach, his little men all before him,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/michael-had-slipped-beyond-the-crest-of-the-dune-jacob-was-lying-flat/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“The wind,” Mary said again. “It was making everyone tear up.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/the-wind-mary-said-again-it-was-making-everyone-tear-up/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“Not a soul,” Mary Keane said to her husband, the wind lifting her words, tossing them gently back over her shoulder, the way it…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/not-a-soul-mary-keane-said-to-her-husband-the-wind-lifting-her-words/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/there-wasn-t-a-tear-to-be-seen-on-the-faces-of-the-men-and-women-in/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/his-love-for-his-children-bore-down-on-his-heart-with-the-weight-of/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/mr-persichetti-knew-that-six-weeks-before-its-time-and-with-a-good/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“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.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/mike-shea-became-a-medic-during-the-war-and-was-now-married-working/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/as-a-writer-i-m-too-busy-and-worried-to-experience-the-delight-while/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) > [“Why not?” but without conviction, confirming for them both that this was a sudden impulse that most likely would not last out the afternoon.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/why-not-but-without-conviction-confirming-for-them-both-that-this-was/) [Alice McDermott](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/alice-mcdermott/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/ten-years/alice-mcdermott/#itemlist", "name": "4 Ten years Quotes By Alice McDermott", "numberOfItems": 4, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“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. To this day she can’t quite convince herself that the sin was as grave as it seemed. (She thought, in fact, of telling the priest as he whispered his furious admonitions that she weighed barely a hundred pounds and was as thin as a boy and if he would adjust his imagination accordingly and see the buds of her breasts and her flat stomach and the bony points of her hips, he would understand that even buck naked, her body was not made for mortal sin.) 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To this day he can’t look…” — Alice McDermott", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“He folded back the hem of her housedress. Peeled the wet underpants from her skin and moved them down over her pale knees and her small feet and then dropped them on the floor. He could hear the voices of the children playing in the tree outside. He gently pushed her thighs apart and saw immediately that the baby had already begun to crown. Her skin was paler than his wife’s was, even in midwinter. He gave her his hand to get her through the next contraction, keeping his arm steady as she squeezed. He spread the fingers of the other over her taut belly. Mr. Persichetti wore a silver Saint Christopher’s medal around his neck and kept a Sacred Heart scapular in his pocket, but when Mary Keane asked him, catching her breath, “Who’s the patron saint of women in labor?” he shrugged. He told her he only knew Saint Dymphna was the patron of the insane. He’d had the story from an Irish priest assigned to Creedmoor. “A sad case himself,” Mr. Persichetti said, and gently pulled the damp hem of her dress back over her thighs. For a moment he found himself incapable of remembering Mr. Keane’s face, although they’d been neighbors for perhaps ten years. Nor could he remember another conversation he’d had with this woman stretched before him now on her living-room couch, her hair damp and her eyes a kind of gray, or green. He took her hand as if she were his child, or his own wife. “Apparently,” he said, “this Saint Dymphna was the daughter of an Irish chieftain, a pagan. But she had a beautiful Christian mother.” Gray eyes or green, he thought they were the one thing that might have made her pretty when she was young. “So the mother dies.” He paused only briefly. “When the girl’s about fourteen. And the chieftain goes crazy and tells his servants to go out and find another beautiful woman who resembled his dead wife so he can marry her.” He paused again to touch her”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alice McDermott" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/he-folded-back-the-hem-of-her-housedress-peeled-the-wet-underpants/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/756/alice-mcdermott-1961_beautiful-woman_he-folded-back-the-hem-of-her-housedress_437196.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/756/alice-mcdermott-1961_beautiful-woman_he-folded-back-the-hem-of-her-housedress_437196.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/756/alice-mcdermott-1961_beautiful-woman_he-folded-back-the-hem-of-her-housedress_437196.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“He folded back the hem of her housedress. Peeled the wet underpants from her skin and moved them down over…” — Alice McDermott", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“She shifted again, leaning her weight onto one thigh and then the other as the baby offered its own counterbalance. She moved her hands inside her coat and grasped her belly, the way she might hold a child’s face between her hands to silence tears, or to ask, What is it, what’s wrong? She stroked her sides, the loose knit of the cotton sweater she had confiscated from her husband’s closet ten years ago, when she was pregnant with Michael and could bear only cotton or silk against her skin. She felt the baby ripple under her fingers. She felt a heel—surely it was a heel here on her left side—press against her skin and then dart away, going under, before she could quite gauge its shape. It was possible it had something to do with the ocean, all this activity. Something to do with the salt scent of it on the air and on the wind. The tug of some ancient memory—didn’t they say life began in the sea—or maybe some dawning hope that the what-do-you-call-it, the fluid the baby now floated in (which someone had told her was also precisely as salty as the ocean), was a tributary, not merely a pool.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alice McDermott" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/alice-mcdermott/she-shifted-again-leaning-her-weight-onto-one-thigh-and-then-the/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/366/alice-mcdermott-1961_ten-years_she-shifted-again-leaning-her-weight-ont_846042.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/366/alice-mcdermott-1961_ten-years_she-shifted-again-leaning-her-weight-ont_846042.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/366/alice-mcdermott-1961_ten-years_she-shifted-again-leaning-her-weight-ont_846042.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“She shifted again, leaning her weight onto one thigh and then the other as the baby offered its own…” — Alice McDermott", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Once, ten years ago, at a Sunday-afternoon party in some apartment that she remembered now as being labyrinthine, although it probably had only four bedrooms, as opposed to the place she shared with her brother and her father that had two, Mike Shea had seized her by the wrist and pulled her into a dim room and plastered his mouth against hers before she could catch her breath. She had known him since high school, he was part of the crowd she went with then, and he had kissed her once or twice before—she remembered specifically the train station at Fishkill, on a snowy night when they were all coming back from a sledding party—but this was passionate and desperate, he was very drunk, and rough enough to make her push him off if he had not, in the first moment she had come up for air, gently taken off his glasses and placed them on a doilied dresser beside them, and then, in what seemed the same movement, reached behind her to lock the door. It was the odd, drunken gentleness of it, not to mention the snapping hint of danger from the lock, that changed her mind. And after two or three rebukes when he tried to get at the buttons that ran up the back of her dress, she thought, Why not, and although her acquiescence seemed to slow him down a bit, as if he was uncertain of the next step, she was enjoying herself enough by then to undo the last button without prompting and then to pull her bare shoulder and arm up out of the dress—first one then the other—and to pull dress and slip (she didn’t wear a bra, no need) down to her waist in a single gesture. And then—was it just the pleasure of the material against her bare flesh, his shirt front, her wool?—she slowly pushed dress and slip and garter belt and stockings down over her narrow hips until they fell to her feet. And then she stepped out of her shoes. 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