Chris Bohjalian Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Chris Bohjalian.
Famous Quotes By Chris Bohjalian
No one said living isn't a pretty chancy business, Sibyl. No one gets out of here alive. — Chris Bohjalian
What is most important to me is that my narrator's voice is believable, and that, though it is clearly an absolute fiction, it has the emotional resonance of memoir. — Chris Bohjalian
They studied the way the world
changed at morning and dusk and imagined how the sun might fall on the skin of a goddess. — Chris Bohjalian
When the sun is strong and the air is warm, however, we shout greetings to one another down the lengths of long driveways and from the windows of our cars as we pass; we hold our heads high as we walk, staring up into the sky with our eyes shut and our faces widened by smiles. We breathe in deeply the summery air, but this sort of inhalation doesn't result in a sigh; it's a precursor to a purr, or the moans one might make during a backrub. We no longer mope, we no longer grouse. We are filled with energy. Although — Chris Bohjalian
Be wary of what I might learn. "No. Do you think I should?" "I don't know. Maybe," she replied, and in my mind I saw her in her high-backed bar stool at the island in the kitchen where the kids scarfed down their Lucky Charms before walking down the hill to school. Then, before I could answer, she went on, "It will be weird if we're related to the woman in the photo." "In what way?" "She's so ... " "Go ahead," I said. "She's not like us. Even if she is related to us, she's not like us. I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just that she's from a different world. — Chris Bohjalian
She talks and talks because whenever she is silent she finds herself looking at him and her breath grows a little short. — Chris Bohjalian
So you're positive the killer is a man."
"Yes, I think my gender can take responsibility for this one. Women don't cut out other women's hearts."
"We can. — Chris Bohjalian
I do have hobbies - I garden and bike, for example - but there's nothing in the world that gives me even a fraction of the pleasure that I derive from hanging around with my wife and daughter. — Chris Bohjalian
She would hear the verbal balancing act: urgency mixed like gin amid the tonic of consideration. — Chris Bohjalian
But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle? — Chris Bohjalian
My dad and Patricia viewed my decision to become a vegetarian largely in terms of the way it seemed to complicate their dinner menus. — Chris Bohjalian
Though angels were easy to finds in cemeteries, she said that she didn't especially care for funereal angels and tombstone cherubs
she wanted her angels among the living, not watching over the already dead
and thus she scoured parks and gardens for the angels with whom, on some level, she wanted to commune. — Chris Bohjalian
I don't know, maybe I just wanted to be alone. Maybe I just didn't want to be social because antisocial people have a whole lot less to lose. — Chris Bohjalian
We have on earth exactly the amount of time that has been allotted to us, no more and no less. We really have precious little control. — Chris Bohjalian
The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th century's first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War. — Chris Bohjalian
He moved quickly away from her through the ring, his whole body starting forward with the big animal in two-point and then
the horse's legs extended before and behind her, a carousel pony but real, the immense thrust invisible to anyone but the boy on the creature's back
he was rising, rising, rising ...
And aloft. — Chris Bohjalian
As Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify with animal suffering than it did to conceive of space flight or cloning or nuclear fusion. Yes, she was a fanatic in the eyes of most of the country ... Mostly, however, she just lacked patience for people who wouldn't accept her belief that humans inflicted needless agony on the animals around them, and they did so in numbers that were absolutely staggering. — Chris Bohjalian
My wife and I would be very comfortable having a baby at home or using one of the terrific nurse-midwives at the hospital. — Chris Bohjalian
But she insists the family hadn't a choice. Not true. We always have choices. Isn't that what Dante teaches us?
I really have become quite the Dante scholar: There is no greater sorrow than to recall our time of joy in wretchedness. — Chris Bohjalian
At night, when no one's there, the dancers and the musicians on the walls come to life and there's a glamorous ball. Sometimes their lights are so bright I can see the glow from my bedroom. — Chris Bohjalian
A single, ordinary person still can make a difference - and single, ordinary people are doing precisely that every day. — Chris Bohjalian
She didn't care so much whether the world would ever forgive her people; but she did hope that someday, somehow, she would be able to forgive herself. — Chris Bohjalian
I have lived with magic and without magic, and I can tell you with certainty that a life with magic is better ... — Chris Bohjalian
Are an Armenian," says the Turk with the handgun. "I am." "Where are you going?" "Damascus." "Why?" "My sister lives there." "What do you do?" "I'm an engineer. I'm working on the Baghdad Railway - the spur from Aleppo to Nusaybin." "The British have captured Nasiriyah." "I hadn't heard that." He nods. "Had you heard that an Armenian murdered a Turkish — Chris Bohjalian
She feared that she'd missed something, because there were so many parallels with her own story, and she could not help but see in her head the small memories her mind would offer as tantalizing, but - in the end unsatisfying, glimpses of what may have occurred. — Chris Bohjalian
As a novelist, there are three phone calls you never expect to receive in your lifetime because if you waited for them you would grow despairing - one calling from Stockholm with a Swedish accent, one from the NBA, and one from Oprah Winfrey. — Chris Bohjalian
I kind of understood at a young age that I didn't play well with most other kids in the sandbox. — Chris Bohjalian
Even a magnificent city such as Florence becomes more intriguing if there is a demon at work in the alleys. — Chris Bohjalian
If they veered left, it would feel to them as if they were sinking into the earth: the path would narrow as the ground around them rose up to their hips, then shoulders, then heads. The walls would turn from sod to stone, and it would seem as if they were walking inside a crag in a cliff. The sky would be reduced to a thin swath of blue, broken in parts by the branches of the trees that grew above them along the sides of this ancient channel. — Chris Bohjalian
On a regular basis if you're trying to produce something, I think you should work every day and set achievable goals. — Chris Bohjalian
Then there were those girls who became midwives: girls who could not get enough of the tiniest of babies - girls who would grow into women who absolutely reveled in the magnificent process of birth ... The difference between a woman who becomes an OB and the women who becomes and midwife has less to do with education, philosophy or upbringing than with the depth of her appreciation for the miracle of labor and for life in its moment of emergence. — Chris Bohjalian
It has helped me to understand more about who I am- the geography of my own soul. — Chris Bohjalian
You know the type - will give herself to the first nobleman in a uniform who comes calling with a couple of eggs and a piece of rat meat."
"You're selling yourself short."
"I've just sold myself for rat meat," she said, and she turned from him and lit the stove. — Chris Bohjalian
And when something wasn't working, you changed it. Breakdowns lead to breakthroughs. — Chris Bohjalian
Serafina may think I'm a crazy person, but I'm not. She has her scars, too - and not only the ones I saw when she turned her head and her hair fell aside. We are both living out our lives in a Purgatorio. The difference? I arrived from the Paradiso, once young and married and so in love. But Serafina, she who was born alone in a fever dream of fire? She whose very skin is a tapestry of loss? Serafina, of course, arrived from the Inferno. — Chris Bohjalian
A term came to her that they used on occasion at the shelter: the double bind ... They used the expression in much the same way that they would use a term like catch-22. — Chris Bohjalian
That might just mean that I had nothing better to do — Chris Bohjalian
We always have choices. Isn't that what Dante teaches us? — Chris Bohjalian
When it seems you have nothing at all to live for, death is not especially frightening. — Chris Bohjalian
Fletcher Free Library. (Supposedly, — Chris Bohjalian
There is a lot of my childhood in 'The Sandcastle Girls.' — Chris Bohjalian
Seriously," the banker went on, "what do you investigate? I have a feeling you do more than find stray kittens and bring home lost babies."
"Murder. — Chris Bohjalian
I loved all ghost stories. So I guess it was only a matter of time before I wrote one. — Chris Bohjalian
My grandparents, like many genocide survivors, took most of their stories to their graves. — Chris Bohjalian
Life is filled with small moments that seem prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed. — Chris Bohjalian
I'm half-Armenian. Even though my grandparents did not discuss the genocide, and my father - like many sons and daughters of immigrants - wanted to be as 'American' as possible, I was always aware of it. How could I not be? — Chris Bohjalian
Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially
romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory. — Chris Bohjalian
And just as there is random horror-murder,suicide,child abuse,car accidents.......there is also indiscriminate kindness.
Not merely miracles,though I have experienced them.But simple human connection,either brokered by an angel or sourced by one.
That is why I try to encourage people to be receptive to that new person who seems to have appeared in their life out of nowhere. — Chris Bohjalian
Children are resilient," Anise said, simultaneously agreeing with her friend and cutting her off. "But often their wounds simply remain invisible until, all at once, whatever is festering there becomes agonizingly apparent. — Chris Bohjalian
On the one hand, I'm this guy who grew up in the suburbs of New York City to very conservative parents, and the other side of me is fascinated by the peripheries of our culture, maybe because that's where our culture is most in transition and where there's likely to be conflict. — Chris Bohjalian
In America, Walt Disney opened an amusement park.
And in Florence, someone was savaging the remnants of a Tuscan nobleman's family. — Chris Bohjalian
My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt. — Chris Bohjalian
She closed her eyes and tried desperately to swim through the mist that enveloped her memories. She was near here and then she wasn't. She was whole and then she was wounded. Forever scarred. And in between? Unknowable, it seemed. Absolutely unknowable. — Chris Bohjalian
If you are stymied as a writer, if it's just not coming together, then take the pressure off and don't feel that you need to write 1,000 words today; just write one really good sentence. — Chris Bohjalian
I think the most important lesson isn't necessarily to try and write a different book every time, or to try and brand yourself and write one specific kind of book, but to write the kind of books you love to read. — Chris Bohjalian
I'm not sure I can think of anything sadder than a homeless person with a homeless dog. — Chris Bohjalian
Why a ghost story? Well, I love them. They're fun to read - and, yes, fun to write. — Chris Bohjalian
She cringed when she saw she needed a bikini wax - and cringed that she even got them in the first place. It wasn't the pain. It was the whole idea she was raising her daughter in a world where pubic hair was a problem. — Chris Bohjalian
My personal opinion is that, if you're a professional writer, that you do have quotas. So every day I do try to write 800-1,200 words. I don't always achieve it, and the reality is that a lot of the words I write will end up on the cutting-room floor. — Chris Bohjalian
How the Germans can remain allies with the Turks is beyond me. No European nation would ever commit the sorts of crimes that this regime is blithely committing right now. — Chris Bohjalian
The message, if you think about it this way, is all about taking chances because fate or destiny or God will protect you. Take a risk, have a little faith. It's all about life, not death. — Chris Bohjalian
The dead were too ...present. — Chris Bohjalian
I love it when the snowflakes are flying like butterflies. — Chris Bohjalian
This was why men fell in love with strippers and escorts: it wasn't the licentiousness, the dissembling, their craven willingness to do whatever you wanted. It was the way they would, out of the blue, surprise you with the psychic ability to know what you needed. — Chris Bohjalian
And though some days it is very hard, I try not to live for the future. And I try not to dream of the past. — Chris Bohjalian
months earlier with Kristin, — Chris Bohjalian
I live here in Vermont, in a village of barely a thousand people halfway up the state's third highest mountain. — Chris Bohjalian
The problem with always having to be right is that sometimes you're not. And so, if you're like me, those times when you're not, you try and save face - especially after you've seriously fucked up. You make one bad decision and then another, trying to fix that very first fuck-up. — Chris Bohjalian
Too often we presume that the unexpected strangers in our lives bode ill,or we are skeptical of their designs.We think we know more.
And while I am well aware that there is indeed all manner of malevolence in the ether,there is benevolence there,too — Chris Bohjalian
People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read. — Chris Bohjalian
The Beatrice that obsessed Dante was a Florentine named Bice di Folco Portinari. Envision this moment (and, in all fairness, I am envisioning it the way Henry Holiday did in his exquisite nineteenth-century painting): Bice is walking beside the Arno River, dressed in white, the fabric clinging to her legs and outlining her slender thighs, and there is Dante. He meets her at the corner of one of the bridges that span
the river. His left hand, at first glimpse, is moving casually toward his hip; it is only on a more careful study that one realizes his hand is actually going up to his heart. Meanwhile, his right hand is resting on the bridge's waist-high stone balustrade, as if Bico's beauty is such that he needs to steady himself when he beholds her. — Chris Bohjalian
But history does matter. There are lines connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Serbs and the Rwandans. They are obviously morbid. Really, how much genocide can one sentence handle? You get the point. Besides, my grandparents' story deserves to be told, regardless of their nationalities. — Chris Bohjalian
Nothing
and I mean nothing, Carly Banks
is crazy if you're in love. — Chris Bohjalian
We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven. — Chris Bohjalian
Those who participate in a genocide as well as those who merely look away rarely volunteer much in the way of anecdote or observation. Same with the heroic and the righteous. Usually it's only the survivors who speak-and often they don't want to talk much about it either. p. 75 — Chris Bohjalian
Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine ... and then make them plausible. — Chris Bohjalian
Everything about [chance] scares the bejesus out of so many people; it's the this thing they try to avoid at all costs. Don't travel to the Middle East these days - there's a chance something could happen. Don't get involved with that new fellow on Creamery Street - I hear a lot of mud was scraped off his floor after the divorce. Don't have your baby at home - there's a a chance something could go wrong. Don't don't don't ... Well, you can't live your life like that! You can't spend your entire life avoiding chance. It's out there, it's inescapable, it's a part of the soul of the world. There are no sure things in this universe, and it's absolutely ridiculous to try and live like there are! — Chris Bohjalian
I need complete silence when I write. — Chris Bohjalian
As a species, we're either very resilient or super callous. I don't know which. — Chris Bohjalian
When I was 13, my family moved from a suburb of New York City to Miami, Florida, and we moved there the Friday before Labor Day weekend. — Chris Bohjalian
And so Cristina submerged her ears beneath the water and the world grew a little quieter; her hair fanned out atop the plane and she ran her fingers through it and was reminded of a goddess in a Renaissance painting. Her mind wandered far from the villa and the ruins and her unshakable sense that her world was about to change. — Chris Bohjalian
Did you know that a lot of Emily Dickinson's poems can be sung to the theme from Gilligan's Island? Not kidding, this is totally legit. — Chris Bohjalian
Sara knew that behind its locked front door no home was routine. Not the house of her childhood, not the apartment of her husband's. not the world they were building together with Willow and Patrick. All households had their mysteries, their particular forms of dysfunction. — Chris Bohjalian
He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not. — Chris Bohjalian
In her experience, dead children, unlike dead adults, always looked as if they were sleeping - though she understood that there was an element of wishful thinking whenever she had come across corpses that young. — Chris Bohjalian
But my biggest worry was that he would — Chris Bohjalian
During the war, I promised the dead I would never forget them. I stared at them, barely able to move myself. Pretended I was one of them. To this day I can recall the light in the ruins. — Chris Bohjalian
We were too young- and the ground too muddy- for our small part of the earth to move. — Chris Bohjalian
He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing. — Chris Bohjalian
But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want. — Chris Bohjalian
I answer two or three letters a day. I'm just not the he-has-a-secretary kind of guy. — Chris Bohjalian
Stories, after all, are merely memories given a certain tangibility with words, and it only takes a few words to subsume a memory completely. — Chris Bohjalian
Boys look at us like we look at horses: color, height, eyes. tail. They can't help but have preferences. — Chris Bohjalian
The world is filled with human toxins
not the darkness that we all occasionally crave, but actually people who are so unwilling to bask in the angelic light that is offered us all that they grow poisonous
and you can pray for their eventual recovery and healing. And sometimes those prayers will be answered. But sometimes these individuals have been vaccinated against goodness and against angels and they are so unwilling to give an inch to their God that often they never (and I use this expression absolutely literally) see the light. — Chris Bohjalian
With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight. — Chris Bohjalian
Now, the separation between depression and suicide is more crevasse than chasm. — Chris Bohjalian
Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they're right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves. — Chris Bohjalian
No surgery in the world was going to offer him the particular history that went along with growing up female. No procedure was going to give him the joys or the terrors that must accompany pregnancy- that must, for teen girls, make sex a walk over Niagara Falls on a tightrope. — Chris Bohjalian
If you look at my personal library, you will notice that it ranges from Henry James to Steig Larsson, from Margaret Atwood to Max Hastings. There's Jane Austen and Tom Perrotta and volumes of letters from Civil War privates. It's pretty eclectic. — Chris Bohjalian