Alison Espach Quotes & Sayings

Adults were constantly auditioning, but for what? — Alison Espach

Inside my house, nobody was home, except everybody, but it was easy to feel like those were one and the same. — Alison Espach

You know," my father said sprinkling nutmeg on his brandy Alexander, "if you sniff too much nutmeg, you could die."
"You can die from anything, really," my mother said "You can die from eating too many apricots."
"How many apricots?" I said, afraid that the World's Most Pathetic Death could happen to me. — Alison Espach

Being an adult, it seemed, was horrible. But being a child was awful too, and moving from one state to the other only meant you were moving closer to death, with so much and so little to talk about all at the same time, and how was that even possible? — Alison Espach

You Americans so quiet because you Americans don't know anything for real. You know your gas prices, you know your baseball numbers but do you know that no piece of paper can be folded more than seven times? — Alison Espach

And yet, every day, it seemed, I was discovering new ways to feel fourteen again. Everyday, there were new ways to be disappointed by the conversation, by the weather. — Alison Espach

And then once in the music storage room. It was cold. The room was small with thin gray carpet and I cried after in my bed thinking of how sad the violins looked alone in the corner. It was embarrassing to have sex in front of the wrong things, especially a violin, which was so dignified at every angle — Alison Espach

She said this as though my father and Laura's father and her ex-husband were not the same person. She said it like we were losing three completely different people. I didn't know what she was losing and she didn't know what I was losing, but the doctors kept making it clear that what we were all losing was an organism. — Alison Espach

Even through all of this, sometimes I wanted to lift up her chin and say, "Don't you see that is your dog?" Don't you see how we didn't want to have to love you, Laura? Don't you see how you have to love things forever anyway, no matter if it shakes, or drools, or barks in the middle of the night, or throws up food, or dies, because even in death, he is still your dog? You picked him out of a group and said, that is my dog, and the dog you picked shakes and drools and barks in the middle of the night, but you named him. And for that reason you should never want to give him up, you should always be grateful since your dog is one of the few things in life that you actually can choose as your own. — Alison Espach

My father moved out a week later. I hugged him at our front door and couldn't bear to watch him leave with so much luggage. — Alison Espach

The neighborhood had gotten really into pastel the last few years. It started when Alfred's wife painted their whole house a soft pink during menopause. Looks Like Linen it was called. People raved. A magazine came, made the family hold up a rotisserie chicken, and then photographed it. A few months later, Mrs. Trenton's house was Mint Leaf. Ours became Celery Powder. The Resnicks' house turned Yellow Feather. — Alison Espach

Cry your guts out because nothing is sadder than an adult who forgets how to be a child. — Alison Espach

Janice was intrigued. "Wouldn't you die from that?" she asked, determined to love him forever. — Alison Espach

Children's lives are always beginning and adults' lives are always ending. Or is it the opposite? Your childhood is always ending and your adult self is always beginning. You are always learning how to say good-bye to whoever you were at the dinner table the night before. — Alison Espach

When it was real it wasn't funny. When you touched someone, they were always with you. When his mouth was on mine, we held the same breath in the same moment, and when he was naked, his body was covered in tiny black hairs that stuck to my clothes even after I washed them. He had sowly become a part of me and when he was cruel, or cold, or acted like we couldn't go on like this anymore it felt like he was ripping my limbs off, one at a time. — Alison Espach

I rolled the ball of muffin and I waited and after my mother said, "That you should really take a multivitamin," my father threw up his hands in disgust, and I was positive I had no family at all, certain it was not my mother but the solar wind that carried me into the universe. — Alison Espach

There is nothing better than this, he said, and I worried he was right. I worried that once something had entered you, it would never leave - he would plant himself inside me and grow and grow until I was nothing but him. — Alison Espach

Even when you can't see yourself, my mother said in my ear, you are still yourself, and even when you can't see your father, he is still your father, just because you can't see someone, it doesn't mean that they aren't someone, and what a relief! my mother had cried, taking the hands away from my eyes, what a relief. — Alison Espach

All fathers are liars ... If you want to be a father, you have to be prepared to become a liar. — Alison Espach

Death was just an image, I told myself, a coming together of events in a single frame, and pain was just a part of the painting and haven't we learned our lesson? Meaning is most poignant when never fully accessed. — Alison Espach