Allegra Goodman Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 16 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Allegra Goodman.
Famous Quotes By Allegra Goodman
In the kitchen, her family nibbled Helen's lemon squares. Melanie urged brownies on the nurses. "Take these," she told Lorraine. "We can't eat them all, but Helen won't stop baking."
"Sweetheart," Lorraine said, "everybody mourns in her own way."
Helen mourned her sister deeply. She arrived each day with shopping bags. Her cake was tender with sliced apples, but her almond cookies crumbled at the touch. Her pecan bars were awful, sticky-sweet and hard enough to break your teeth. They remained untouched in the dining room, because Helen never threw good food away. — Allegra Goodman
Leaving this changeling for George, she washed his ripe fruit, and bit and broke the skin. An intense tang, the underside of velvet. Then flesh dissolved in a rush of nectar. Juice drenched her hand and wet the inside of her wrist. She had forgotten, if she'd ever know, that what was sweet could also be so complicated, that fruit could have a nap, like fabric, soft one way, sleek the other. — Allegra Goodman
On breezy days when the wind was not too light and not too strong, Will and Pamela and the children flew their homemade kites in Peaceful Park until they were specks in the blue sky. When the wind was just right, the kites felt so strong and safe up there that Honor imagined nothing could budge them.
'Ho bum, boasted Will, 'I could stand here all day and this kite would hold. It's like fishing.'
'Fishing in reverse,' said Pamela. 'Sky fishing.'
'What do you fish for in the air?' asked Honor.
Pamela and Will started laughing. 'Oh, planets,' said Will. 'The occasional comet. An asteroid or two.'
Honor held one kite string, and Will held the other. Pamela held Quintilian. On those afternoons, four did not seem like the wrong number for a family. Four seemed just right. — Allegra Goodman
Though experience should be our guide ... and we see mistakes are common at the age of twenty-three, it must be acknowledged that not every youthful feeling begins unworthily and ends in error. If this were the case, mankind would have perished long ago. — Allegra Goodman
I have a dark sense of humor,' Fanny explained.
'What's that supposed to mean?' asked Honor.
'It means I'm funny once you get to know me,' Fanny said. — Allegra Goodman
We've got an acquisitive gene. We want and want, and there's no way around it. — Allegra Goodman
People ask every day, "Why was I put on earth?" As if there is perhaps one reason. The truth is that there are too many reasons to count, and each reason and each soul connects to every other, — Allegra Goodman
Love your material. Nothing frightens the inner critic more than the writer who loves her work. The writer who is enamored of her material forgets all about censoring herself. She doesn't stop to wonder if her book is any good, or who will publish it, or what people will think. She writes in a trance, losing track of time, hearing only her characters in her head. — Allegra Goodman
Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces. — Allegra Goodman
She herself vacillated when it came to belief. She did not particularly believe in God. Or, rather, she didn't believe in a particular God. Nevertheless, she kept an open mind. She was not a melancholy agnostic, but the optimistic kind. She liked to give God the benefit of the doubt. — Allegra Goodman
How sad, he thought, that desire found new objects but did not abate, that when it came to longing there was no end. — Allegra Goodman
The new one actually reads, but only to pass judgment. This is the way kids learn today. Someone told them how you feel is more important than what you know, and so they think accusations are ideas. This is political correction run amok. — Allegra Goodman
Talent and intelligence, not to mention tireless hard work, got lab scientists through the door, but - this was the dirty secret - you needed luck. — Allegra Goodman
Reading was like visiting distant friends. — Allegra Goodman
Jeanne's sisters thought nothing of themselves ... Helen stayed up late in Brookline, baking. Lemon squares, and brownies, pecan bars, apple cake, sandy almond cookies. Alone in her kitchen, she wrapped these offerings in waxed paper and froze them in tight-lipped containers ...
Helen was the baker of the family. What she felt could not be purchased. She grieved from scratch. — Allegra Goodman
Women hate each other in science. You know why? Because the few that are around were trained by men. They survived by being twice as good and twice as competitive and twice as badass as the guys. — Allegra Goodman