“It was then that I began to write. Writing helps when you can't talk to your friends; it wasn't that my friends were untrustworthy, it's just that I would never discuss something that was hardly real as though it were… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“Mr. O'Donnell was at the library counter, performing the sort of grim rituals librarians perform with index cards and stumpy pencils and those rubber stamps with columns of rotating numbers. "Ms. Auerbach! What will it be today? Camus? Cervantes?" "Actually… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“Hell is only loneliness, a place without play for the soul, a place without God. How could there be God in loneliness when God… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“Having to talk to people was the one thing, but soliciting conversation was something else. If I acted squirmy or didn't make eye contact,… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“I shook my head. I couldn't remember the time before, or the way it used to be. There were things we used to do,… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“They were sorting, or classifying. It's easy-anyone dressed funny is the enemy, especially if they reject your supremacy or do not acknowledge school as… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“The families of graduating seniors emptied out of cars, sheepish in uncommon splendor, like milling clans at the origin of a parade. There is… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“My mother refuses to go into the ocean. She respects it, she says, which is basically the same as saying she's afraid. I go… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“The unusual thing about quiet is that when you seek it, it is almost impossible to achieve. When you strive for quiet, you become… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“I liked the idea of marking the place where a life ends as opposed to the place a corpse is buried. And also the… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“My hand reaches for his eye. He does not pull away but breathes into my touch. His normal lid drifts closed, and beneath my… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“Envy is awful. Unlike jealousy, which comes from the threat of losing what you cherish, envy is a dark desire for things over which… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“Jocks were pretty much exempt from the standards that bound the rest of us. Teachers and administrators humor them because it's in everyone's interests… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“This is where I falter. This is where I lose myself. This is where years invert and minutes reverse and ideas of what was… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
“If you travel internationally, you will feel shocked by contemptuous talk of America. To hear your fellow citizens characterized as barbarians who know nothing… — Hilary Thayer Hamann Copy Share Image
