Doug Dorst Quotes & Sayings

The feeling, for those seconds, is glorious - it reminds him that he is human, that he is so insignificant as to be utterly free, and he is being guided along gracefully, lovingly, by the hand of Nature - and it frees him, however transiently, from all worry and fear and fury and grief. 'I enjoyed that,' he says aloud, as much to the stars as to the rower. — Doug Dorst

This is what happens, of course: men get lost, men vanish, men are erased and reborn. — Doug Dorst

He has been through too much - too much suffering, too much uncertainty, too much loss, too much trauma - to tolerate not being taken seriously. — Doug Dorst

Time and circumstances change us ... and it is pointless to ask why. — Doug Dorst

FXC arguing that love is what makes us most human - to deny it is to deny an essential part of your humanity. — Doug Dorst

Long day today,' she says.
'Every day's the same length, sweetie. — Doug Dorst

A kindred spirit? Perhaps
if not kindred to the man he is, or was, then to the sort of man he wouldn't mind being. — Doug Dorst

They speak little; it is as if the air has been churned up with decade's worth of fruitless pursuit and missed connections and thoughts unspoken, and they are waiting quietly for all this matter - these motes of opportunity forgone - to settle around them. — Doug Dorst

It dawned on him that he really could be a cop if he wanted to, and it dawned on him that he'd had this revelation while eating a donut, and it that wasn't a sign, he didn't know what was. — Doug Dorst

He threads a hook, re-sews his mouth, cuts off the thread-tails with the razor blade. It's a simple task, no more difficult than shaving. He can do it in the dark. He can do it in a thirty-knot wind and seven-foot seas. He can do it in his sleep, and he probably has.
(Margin note in reference to excerpt above "Per Dr. B: it's easy to get used to doing things that are harmful to ourselves- do it often enough + it becomes ordinary/habitual- just how you live. — Doug Dorst

He is terrified, suddenly, that she will vanish again, that they will continue to age, and likely die, apart. — Doug Dorst

We tried to tell him,' Toronto says.
'You made fun of him,' Mazzarella points out.
'That was how we tried to tell him. — Doug Dorst

There's a spiritual connection between flame and narrative. — Doug Dorst

I like to think he's in a better place. And besides, when you get older, you want to have something to believe in. — Doug Dorst

For one moment, it is more important to take in the spectacular than to worry about the pressing business of staying alive. — Doug Dorst

- I can't make choices like that without knowing who I am. Without knowing all the implications.
- You can't ever know in advance. Big decisions require faith. — Doug Dorst

Look at Andrew Roe's The Miracle Girl from one angle and you'll see an incisive and insightful critique of America at the millennium and today, investigating where we put our faith and why. The greatest of Roe's achievements in this captivating debut is a memorable feat of intense empathy. Roe inhabits characters who are desperate to believe and reveals to us their needs and wounds and hopes, and he does so with kindness, generosity, and wisdom. This is a novel about what it means to be human, to seek connection and hope and maybe even transcendence in the world around us. — Doug Dorst

If you can become anything, then you aren't anything. Right? Like there's some fundamental way in which the you of you doesn't exist anymore. — Doug Dorst

He is a man without a past sailing in a strange sea in a world where the stars have come loose in the firmament. — Doug Dorst

Believing something doesn't change who you are. Neither does rejecting something you once believd in. — Doug Dorst

Do you always travel with such cumbersome books?" "I don't trust anyone who wouldn't. — Doug Dorst

Story is a fragile and ephemeral thing on its own, a thing that is easily effaced or disappeared or destroyed, and it is worth preserving. — Doug Dorst

He made his choices, over & over again. He's the one who could've said let's be together
none of this matters more than you, than us. And he didn't. — Doug Dorst

-Wow. So what are you living on?
-Not much. I've sold some things. It's not a bad way to live once you let go of the idea that you deserve more. — Doug Dorst

They're not terrible people. They just couldn't be who I needed them to be. — Doug Dorst

Artistic integrity is not a guest whom one may choose not to invite to a gala. She must be the first you invite, the first you seat, the first you serve food and wine, the one who calls the orchestra's tunes, the one who is offered her choice of dance partners throughout the night. — Doug Dorst

What begins at the water shall end there, and what ends there shall once more begin. — Doug Dorst

It was stolen. As most beautiful things eventually are. — Doug Dorst

The creation of art requires descent into the dark. — Doug Dorst

-It's extremely cool how the words can stay the same but their meaning can change.
-Because the reader changes.
-EXACTLY — Doug Dorst

They all occupied the same space but did not occupy it together. Imagine a thousand leaves of tracing paper, each with one person lightly pencilled on it, all stacked atop a scene of a frozen city block. A thousand discreet and solitary realities that appear to be occurring in the same location. — Doug Dorst

- Maybe VMS is saying that nothing in the world is entirely one way or another.
- Or maybe it's about Sala. She's there, so he's supposed to be
for good or bad.
- I just don't buy that SOT is fundamentally a love story.
- I think you're wrong. — Doug Dorst

It is a glorious thing, to be able to write with pen on paper instead of nail or hook into oak, to feel one's words flowing so smoothly from instrument to surface, without the barriers of friction or poor leverage, and yet its own subtle tactile pleasures as the nib scratches tiny channels into the sheet. And here, unlike in his cabin, here he feels no division between his mind and his hand, no errors in translation or static in the transmission: the words appearing on the page are the ones he has intended to put there, the images match the scenes in his mind, the sensations the very ones that warm his chest, prickle his scalp, push against his eyes. — Doug Dorst

When you fall in love, friends, let yourself fall. — Doug Dorst

Something about her in this moment strikes him as being familiar. The motion of her arm? The shape of her hand? The wrinkle of her upper lip? He does not know. Nor does he have any way to tell whether what he is sensing is a fragment of memory, a fragment of an idea of a memory, or something his mind, desperate for connections, has created on its own. — Doug Dorst

I don't trust anyone who wouldn't. — Doug Dorst

I think it's love.'
'Funny.'
'I'm serious.'
'And your support for this is ... ?'
'A feeling.'
'You need more than that. — Doug Dorst

We're all just in the muck trying to believe we're capable of greatness, but closer to breaking than we want to admit. And we tell ourselves stories
about ourselves,but maybe also all these stories about other people, about characters
as a way to hide from how small we are. — Doug Dorst

A person is no more & no less than the Story of his Passions & Deeds. — Doug Dorst

-I hate that. I hate that people can't just say what they mean.
-You don't. Not always.
-I never say anything I don't mean. I just avoid saying some things that I do. — Doug Dorst

Of course there is a monkey. There is always a monkey. — Doug Dorst

You might say that S. has only himself to blame, that it is entirely his choice to fight this fight, to live a life of vigilant somnolence or somnolent vigilantism, to allow himself to be satisfied with Sola in the margins of his manuscripts instead of in his arms, and you might be right. But you ought to understand, too, that there's an attrition that takes place inside, one in which options and choices and even desires are ground ever smaller until finally their existence can no longer be confirmed by observation or weight or displacement but only by faith. Until desire is a ghost. — Doug Dorst

If I am going out into the unknown, it might as well be the really unknown. — Doug Dorst

Find what you love. Then fight like hell when people try to take it away from you. — Doug Dorst

A person is no more no less than the Story of his Passions Deeds. — Doug Dorst

Better y'not vex y'self on what aint y'vexes. - Malstrom pg 269 — Doug Dorst

Everything you do means something about you. — Doug Dorst

-That's kind of sad.
-I used to think so. Now I think: you're born a certain way. Later you get to decide how much you want to fight/change that. I don't mind being alone.
-You must mind. If you didn't you wouldn't be doing this with me. — Doug Dorst