The Hour I First Believed
Wally Lamb
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.”
“Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.”
“A woman who surrenders her freedom need not surrender her dignity.”
“I don't know. Maybe we're all chaos theorists. Lovers of pattern and predictability, we're scared shitless of explosive change. But we're fascinated by it, too. Drawn to it. Travelers tap their brakes to ogle the mutilation and mangled metal on the side of the interstate, and the traffic backs up for miles. Hijacked planes crash into skyscrapers, breached levees drown a city, and CNN and the networks rush to the scene so that we can all sit in front of our TVs and feast on the footage. Stare, stunned, at the pandemonium--the devils let loose from their cages.”
“that's the funny thing about mazes: what's baffling on the ground begins to makes sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself". (p. 717)”
“Most helpful, Mr. Caelum," she said. "Very, very useful information. And now, shall we hear from Saint Augustine?" I shrugged. "Why not?" I said Dr. P read from a blood-red leather book. "My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry.... Where could my heart find refuge from itself? Where could I go, yet leave myself behind?" She closed the book, then reached across the table and took Maureen's hand in hers. "Does that passage speak to you?" she asked. Mo nodded and began to cry. "And so, Mr. Caelum, good-bye." Because the passage had spoken to me, too, it took me a few seconds to react. "Oh," I said. "You want me to leave?" "I do. Yes, yes.”
“So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.”
“sometimes when you go looking for what you want, you run right into what you need.”
“Sarcasm is a suit of armor.”
“It's like there's this wave coming toward me, but there's nothing I can do about it. And then it reaches me, crashes over me and...and I'm done for another day. I just give up. Give in to it. Because how do you stop a wave? You don't. And you're wise to recognize your powerlessness to do so. But what you can do is learn how to negotiate this wave. Work within the context of its inevitability.”
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Book Keywords:
discovery, mistrust, fear, truth, life, women, journey, writing, inspirational, escapism, spiritual-inspiration, unpredictability-of-life
