Andre Dubus III Quotes & Sayings

I've had a lot of glamour come my way in the last 10 years - you know, movie stars and mansions and red carpets and trips to Europe and crazy stuff I never would have imagined - and I look at them as if I'm the bartender in the corner of the room. They've never gone into my psyche. I look at them with distance, and wonder. — Andre Dubus III

I work out four days a week in the off-season, and in the warm, running weather months, I do five days. A push/pull regime of weightlifting, cycling, and the occasional Saturday or Sunday run with my oldest son, even if it's cold out. — Andre Dubus III

You've got to kill your darlings. — Andre Dubus III

She was speaking again, her voice like the chirp of a bird who has flown into a black tunnel but does not yet know it. — Andre Dubus III

It's easy K. on one side of the page you got your costs and on the other side your benefits. All you do is mark which one is which, then you weigh one side against the other and you get your decision just like that. that's all you ever have to do. i live by this."
"But what if you don't know the difference between a benefit and a cost? what if you've never been very good at telling a plus from a minus? — Andre Dubus III

If there is no snake at your feet, do not lift rocks at the side of the road. — Andre Dubus III

Soraya-joon, I have done all that I could. Do not be sorry for us. Your mother and I await you upon your return. We love you more than we have loved life. After your dear brother name your first son. Live here if you like, but if you sell it take no less than one hundred thousand dollars. ~Bawbaw — Andre Dubus III

Dat's what they say of this cauntry back home, Kath: 'America, the land of milk and honey.' Bot they never tell you the milk's gone sour and the honey's stolen. — Andre Dubus III

There are some beautiful books out there. But the ones that leave me cold are the ones where I feel - it's that postmodern thing - it's more experimentation with language than it is a deep compassionate falling into another human being's experience. — Andre Dubus III

Most of the time I feel stupid, insensitive, mediocre, talentless and vulnerable - like I'm about to cry any second - and wrong. I've found that when that happens, it usually means I'm writing pretty well, pretty deeply, pretty rawly. — Andre Dubus III

For our excess we lost everything. — Andre Dubus III

My dad and mom divorced when I was around ten, and I didn't live with him after that, though he was close by and we saw each other weekly. I wasn't really aware that he was a writer; I didn't start reading his writing until I was about fifteen. It occurred to me then that my dad was kind of special; he's still one of my favorite writers. — Andre Dubus III

Years later I would hear my father say the divorce had left him dating his children. That still meant picking us up every Sunday for a matinee and, if he had the money, an early dinner somewhere. — Andre Dubus III

Even a day writing badly for me is 10 times better than a day where I don't write at all. — Andre Dubus III

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art. — Andre Dubus III

This I know of life's difficult times: there is always a time for them to begin and a time for them to end, and the man who knows this knows he must thank God for each day he has suffered because that is always one day closer to the sun, the real sun. — Andre Dubus III

Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book. — Andre Dubus III

My mother was making $135 a week, but she had resilience and imagination. She might take frozen vegetables, cook them with garlic, onion and Spam, and it would taste like a four-star dinner. — Andre Dubus III

I'm one of those writers who can't talk about what they're working on. The entire four years I was writing 'House of Sand and Fog,' my wife never saw a word of it. I just have to keep it in the womb, and then everyone can have a crack at it. — Andre Dubus III

If you don't put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There's the writer and there's the author. The author - you don't ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care - easier said than done. Accept that the world may never notice this thing you worked so hard at. And instead, do it for it, find a job, find a way of living that gives you an hour or two or three a day to do it, and then work your ass off sending out, trying to get out there, but do not put the pressure on the work to do something for you. Because then you're going to be writing dishonestly and for the market instead of for the characters and your story. — Andre Dubus III

And I felt more like me than I ever had, as if the years I'd lived so far had formed layers of skin and muscle over myself that others saw as me when the real one had been underneath all along, and I knew writing- even writing badly- had peeled away those layers, and I knew then that if I wanted to stay awake and alive, if I wanted to stay me, I would have to keep writing. — Andre Dubus III

Sometimes in this life, only one or two opportunities are put before us and we must seize them no matter the risk. — Andre Dubus III

Beach houses along short sandy streets. He can feel her bare forarm brushing his, and it's strange she's being so quiet. He glances down at her and she smiles up at him as if, in his silence, he's been telling a long story and she is simply listening to it. — Andre Dubus III

I truly believe the art's larger than the artist. Who cares about John Steinbeck? I care about the Joad family. — Andre Dubus III

I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, its self-consciousness. And if you have one eye on the mirror to see how you're doing, you're not doing it as well as you can. Don't think about publishing, don't think about editors, don't think about marketplace. — Andre Dubus III

Different people carry different toolboxes. — Andre Dubus III

One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely, surprisingly good fortune with readers, and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful. — Andre Dubus III

On my way out with the rest, I glanced back at Bowman. he was on this knees, his hair in his face, his nose and split lips dripping with blood. He was staring down at the floor like he'd been waiting for this and now it had finally happened; he look relieved. — Andre Dubus III

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes. — Andre Dubus III

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can't drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs. — Andre Dubus III

I was always a sensitive, sweet kid, but I got brutalized and I became brutal. And frankly, I don't think it was my natural makeup. I don't think its anyone's natural makeup to be a violent brawler. — Andre Dubus III

But even in September, Thursday was a big money night, seven to eight hundred take-home, and that's what April concentrated on as she drove, Franny's chin starting to loll against her chest - April made herself think of that fat roll of tens and twenties she'd have at closing, how she'd fold it into the front pocket of her jeans then go to the house mom's office off the dressing room and give Tina a hundred before she found Franny in her pj's on Tina's brown vinyl couch, and she'd try not to think of the walls above Tina's desk covered with dancers' schedules and audition Polaroids of naked women, some of them under postcards from girls who came and went. — Andre Dubus III

He tried to remember her ever being this way before. In her voice
almost overexuberant
was not simply holiday cheer but joyous relief, like some terminally ill patient who's just been told she's not sick anymore. — Andre Dubus III

I feel that writers think with their noses to the ground, and the dark stuff kind of comes to me more, even though I really am sort of an upbeat guy. It's an honest descent into darkness. And you can't have the joy without the grief - it's why we listen to Mozart's 'Requiem.' — Andre Dubus III

The house was quiet, my room dark and still. I lay awake and thought of all the good men on TV who'd been shot in the head. I saw again the dead soldiers lying on the ground , and until Pop had cried over us, I hadn't thought much about Jeb and me having to go and fight, too. But in only nine years I'd be as old as the dead, and it'd be my turn, wouldn't it? — Andre Dubus III

Lester wanted to rise up out of this like a cloud, to drift over the valley and shore to the Pacific, to dissolve into its huge green expanse like rain. — Andre Dubus III

It's hard to see. There are only the shadows of things. She feels along the fridge to the wall and the phone, touching first her uncle's keys, then her dead aunt's, a woman Devon can feel judging her from the grave even though she's only borrowing something, not stealing it. She has never stolen anything in her life, and she never will. She steps into the cool, still air of the closed garage and she sees Sick's face. The way he looked at her as she let him in, the only one. His hair hung down and his lips were parted and as he moved inside her his eyes seemed to shine with a sweet sadness, the kind that only comes when you know something good can never, ever last. But you keep going anyway. All you can do is keep going and never quit. — Andre Dubus III

Pop," I said, "isn't this shit vaulable?"
"Not to me, son. — Andre Dubus III

The ocean to my right was maroon, the sky above it silver. There were sand trails through the thick purple ice plant that grew along the roadside ... but now the sky is the color of peaches ...
It was a ball of bright saffron sinking into the sea, turning the water purple, the sky orange and green. — Andre Dubus III

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father. — Andre Dubus III

It's almost easier being down and alone than when you re up and no one s there to share the view with you — Andre Dubus III

I got a degree in sociology, didn't read much fiction in college, and I was a pretty political, left-wing type of guy. I wanted to do some kind of work in social change and make things better for the poor man, and I was very romantic and passionate about it. — Andre Dubus III

I was really surprised at the success of 'House of Sand and Fog,' because it is so awfully dark. Believe it or not, when writing it, I never had the word 'tragedy' in my head - I wasn't trying to write a dark book at all. — Andre Dubus III

The truth is life is full of joy and full of great sorrow, but you can't have one without the other. — Andre Dubus III

And that's what I wanted: obliteration. Decimation. Just an instant smear of me right out of all this rising and falling and nothing changing that feels like living. — Andre Dubus III

One of the things I tell the writers with whom I work is, man, when you finish a draft of a poem, or short story or novel, you make sure you go out and celebrate all night long because whether the world ever notices or not, whether you get it published or not, you did something most people never do: You started, stuck with, and finished a creative work. And that is a triumph. That is something to celebrate. All the stuff that I'm talking about is really from the point of view of trying to create art - and I don't mean to sound highfalutin when I bring the word "art" in. All I mean is, a work that seeks to illuminate truth in whatever way possible. — Andre Dubus III

Regret was Fear's big sister, — Andre Dubus III

Letting go of the pipe in the laundry room, he could feel in his throat so many sentences from the night's reading of emails, and he needed to shout them at her now as she poured her coffee in the kitchen, its smell always such a comfort to him, but not then; that morning it was like the sweet fragrance of lilacs just before you see the corpse upon which they lie. — Andre Dubus III

It seemed almost inconceivable that in his short marriage to Althea she had, in her quiet way, left him feeling not only worthy, but exceptional, a man not only capable of being a real poet, but a husband and father too. — Andre Dubus III

It's been six months, Nancy.'
'What's your hurry? It took me a year to get used to living with Carl. I mean, what do men do anyway? They work, eat, drink, and play games. Sex for them is in the sports and recreation category. You can't live with a man and not be lonely.'
'You think so?'
'Absolutely. Besides, once you have kids, it all changes anyway. Everything seems to make sense then. — Andre Dubus III

Joy was something she willed herself to show us, something she raised from deep inside herself as a promise for what could be. Now her life seemed to have opened up into it as if it had been waiting for her. (215) — Andre Dubus III