I’m pleased by anything in myself that strikes me as not myself. — Steven Millhauser Funny Copy Share Image
Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate for our dreams. — Steven Millhauser Conjuring Copy Share Image
“... it is the purpose of this history to trace not the mere outlines of a life but the inner plan, not… — Steven Millhauser Biography 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… — Steven Millhauser Becoming 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,… — Steven Millhauser America Copy Share Image
“... now and again we would happen to step out of the familiar universe into a sudden sharp shock of sweetly scented… — Steven Millhauser Perfume 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… — Steven Millhauser Cutting 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… — Steven Millhauser Ambition Copy Share Image
Perhaps sound is only an insanity of silence, a mad gibber of empty space grown fearful of listening to itself and hearing… — Steven Millhauser Empty 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… — Steven Millhauser Genius 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… — Steven Millhauser Astronomy Copy Share Image
“As we hurry along the sidewalk, we have the absurd sensation that we have entered still another department, composed of ingeniously lifelike… — Steven Millhauser Late afternoon Copy Share Image
So imagine a fire going -- wood snapping the way it does when it’s a little green — the wind rattling the… — Steven Millhauser Behinds Copy Share Image
“Martin got up and brushed off the seat of his pants with his hat. He put his hat on his head and… — Steven Millhauser Bedroom wall 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… — Steven Millhauser Bed Copy Share Image
And again it snowed, and again the sun came out. In the mornings on the way to the station Franklin counted the… — Steven Millhauser Bent 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… — Steven Millhauser Shadowy Underself 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… — Steven Millhauser Beauty Copy Share Image
“As I train myself to cast off words, as I learn to erase word-thoughts, I begin to feel a new world rising… — Steven Millhauser Language Copy Share Image
“Do you believe that the actor on the stage is really a villain? Let me ask you something else. If he isn't… — Steven Millhauser Liar 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 Instruments Copy Share Image
All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal. — Steven Millhauser Conceal Copy Share Image
“I expected no miracles; I wasn't young enough for dreams; I knew in my bones that I couldn't escape my troubles by… — Steven Millhauser Dream Copy Share Image
“The more the mouse pursues this line of of thought, the more it seems to him that the cat is a large,… — Steven Millhauser Cats Copy Share Image
“Ennui had more distractions far more amusing than the automatons of a watchmaker in Mühlenberg.” — Steven Millhauser Writing Copy Share Image
“Franklin knew that the truth lay with the winter night: the world was silent and black-and-white.” — Steven Millhauser Art Copy Share Image
“Awkward approximations, dull stammerings which cannot convey my sense of exhilaration as I seem to burst impediments, to exceed bounds of the… — Steven Millhauser Expansion Copy Share Image
“We others are not like you. We are more prickly, more jittery, more restless, more secretive, more desperate, more cowardly, more bold.… — 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… — Steven Millhauser Storytelling Copy Share Image
“Art, he said, was a controlled madness...He said that books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of… — Steven Millhauser Art Copy Share Image
That afternoon he told me that the difference between human beings and animals was that human beings were able to dream while… — Steven Millhauser Able Copy Share Image
“After all, we were young. We were fourteen and fifteen, scornful of childhood, remote from the world of stern and ludicrous adults.… — Steven Millhauser Adolescence Copy Share Image
“To be Kaspar Hauser is to long, at every moment of your dubious existence, with every fiber of your questionable being, not… — Steven Millhauser Desire Copy Share Image
“He sank back into his black-and-white world, his immobile world of inanimate drawings that had been granted the secret of motion, his… — Steven Millhauser Accidental Copy Share Image
