“As I train myself to cast off words, as I learn to erase word-thoughts, I begin to feel a new world rising up around me, The old world of houses, rooms, trees and streets shimmers, wavers and tears away, revealing… — Steven Millhauser Copy Share Image
I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place. — 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
