Norman Rush

“Nina said, “Have regular facial expressions.” That was a command from their inventory of facetious devices they used to josh one another…

— Norman Rush

Literature is humanity talking to itself.

— Norman Rush

I feel like someone after a deluge being asked to describe the way it was before the flood while I'm still plucking…

— Norman Rush

“And the question was still there of whether their true interior selves—the subtle bodies inside—were still there and functioning despite what age…

— Norman Rush

“The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so…

— Norman Rush

...There is a school of thought, a heresy from the madhouse of heresies in the ninth century, that says God is good…

— Norman Rush

The characters write the plot. Their natures do.

— Norman Rush

I must love big novels, because that's what I've written. It takes a while before you begin to breathe the air the…

— Norman Rush

“There is no permanent friendship between men, among men. Something goes wrong, somebody marries the wrong person, somebody advances too fast, somebody…

— Norman Rush

“Now everything was going to be impossible, but better.”

— Norman Rush

“A utopia I would join in a minute is a society which could be communist or capitalist, anything, except that no woman…

— Norman Rush

I wanted to incorporate everything, understand everything, because time is cruel and nothing stays the same.

— Norman Rush

It’s a rare reader who doesn’t go to the novel looking for a kind of encouragement to live.

— Norman Rush

“It takes a while before you begin to breathe the air the characters breathe.”

— Norman Rush

Small breasts are best for the long haul.

— Norman Rush

It was a standard fantasy when you fell in love to imagine you could go back in time and find your beloved…

— Norman Rush

“He was mixing up friendship with acts and atmospheres from the deluded matrix the boys had lived in for a heartbeat in…

— Norman Rush