All William Maxwell Quotes
- If you turn the imagination loose like a hunting dog, it will often return with the bird in its mouth. Bird
- Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep. Cold
- A gentleman doesn't have one set of manners for the house of a poor man and another for the house of someone with an income… Gentleman
- Who knows what oversensitive is, considering all there is to be sensitive to. All
- I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn’t have gone through and couldn’t get back to the place I hadn’t meant to leave. Couldn
- The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice, Choice
- Satin and lace and brown velvet and the faint odor of violets. That was all which was left to him of his love. All
- My father represented authority, which meant—to me—that he could not also represent understanding. Authority
- Love, even of the most ardent and soul-destroying kind, is never caught by the lens of the camera. Ardent
- In talking about the past, we lie with every breath we draw. Breath
- Reading is rapture (or if it isn't, I put the book down meaning to go on with it later, and escape out the side door). Book
- The nail doesn't choose the time or the circumstances in which it is drawn to the magnet Choose
- I am the cat that walks alone. Alone
- The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to… Any
- Your reader is at least as bright as you are Bright
- Sometimes she goes out to work as a practical nurse, and comes home and sits by the kitchen table soaking her feet in a pan… Bed
- My younger daughter told me recently that when she was a child she thought the typewriter was a toy that I went into my room… Child
- If I had had to write only about imaginary people, I would have had to close up my typewriter. I wrote about my life in… Close
- It's deprivation that makes people writers, if they have it in them to be a writer. Deprivation
- It was lovely when you found students who responded to things you were enthusiastic about. Enthusiastic