After This
Alice McDermott
Top 10 Best Quotes
“It was not the future they'd been objecting to, but the loss of the past. As if it was his fault that you could now have one without the other”
“It was in its strangeness and in its familiarity an illustration of someone else's life going on in its own way, steeped in itself, its own business, its own dailyness, its own particular sorrow or joy, all of it more or less predictable”
“She recalled how Pauline had fallen off a bus one night, late, went skidding into Creedmoor. In a novel, it would have portended the fall they were all about to take”
“His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for them, and hopes for them. There was all he was powerless to change, including who they were--one too mild, one too easily tempted to be cruel, and the little girl (it was the weight of a heavy stone against his heart) a mystery to him, impossible to say what she, through her life, would need. And soon, one more.”
“His eyes went again to the crucifix above his head, reflected in the mirror. The strained arms, the arched spine. All that effort to open the gates of heaven for us and we (he thought) probably spend our first hours among the heavenly hosts settling old scores with relatives.”
“He could not make conversations with strangers, and yet conversations with strangers were perhaps the first thing required of him in his new life.”
“winter morning sun that came from beneath the wooden blinds and marked the new day. Another day. She grew giddy with laughter, convinced as she was, and would remain, that there was portent in his misunderstanding, that their child’s life had indeed begun at that hour. Their baby grand, first of four.”
“what?—the sky growing black, the wind moaning, the scrim of sand that blew across the empty lot forming itself into tooth and mouth and open jaw. “What are you afraid of?” More derisively than he’d meant it.”
“trimmed border of his hair. All that trying to be charming and trying to be demure and hoping to look attentive and to speak well and wondering how this strange impulse of his will come to a conclusion put aside now that they had agreed, finally, that this, after all, was simply what they’d wanted. The warmth of it, the moment’s respite.”
“toward the quilted hamper, unzipped it, and then paused, a single wax-paper-wrapped sandwich in her hand. “Our food will be full of sand,” she said, “with this wind.” And her husband said, “Well, they are sandwiches,” and winked at Michael, who seemed suddenly to recognize his father again.”
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Book Keywords:
fear-of-unknown, this, jesus, children, conversations, crucifix, talking-to-strangers, heaven, relatives, after, family, parenting
