Douglas Kennedy Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 41 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Douglas Kennedy.
Famous Quotes By Douglas Kennedy
With a novel, no matter where I am in it, I'm fretting about it. Every time I write a book, it starts with great forward momentum. Then there seems to be a period where it slows down a bit, and other things intervene. Then I gain momentum. — Douglas Kennedy
The perennial outsider with his nose to the window, looking in on a world from which he felt excluded. — Douglas Kennedy
But can you ever excise a bad parent? Though you might come to terms with all that they have psychologically bequeathed you, they can never really be expunged. They're the stubborn, permanent stain that will never entirely vanish in the wash. — Douglas Kennedy
Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us. — Douglas Kennedy
The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio. — Douglas Kennedy
Another curious thing about the slow progression out of depression: you begin to crave routine. — Douglas Kennedy
If there is an abiding theme in 'The Pursuit of Happiness,' it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people's past histories. — Douglas Kennedy
Beano, buying the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Calgary — Douglas Kennedy
All our stories are simultaneously unique and desperately similar, aren't they? — Douglas Kennedy
There were moments when I felt seriously unhinged; when I was convinced that I would never, ever recover from what had happened, when it was absolutely clear to me that life from this point on would be constant agony ... — Douglas Kennedy
The lure of safety drags us into lives we'd prefer to dodge. — Douglas Kennedy
At dawn, nothing seems certain ... yet everything appears possible. — Douglas Kennedy
I want to be a popular novelist who's also serious, or a serious novelist who's also very accessible. — Douglas Kennedy
From Graham Greene, I learnt how to be an accessible writer who grapples with our doubts as sentient individuals. — Douglas Kennedy
We all talk about how much we hate lies. Yet we prefer, so often, to be lied to ... because it allows us to dodge all those painful truths we'd rather not hear. — Douglas Kennedy
We don't like admitting this, but it is a key component of human existence: the fact that life has the potential for things both wondrous and horrific. — Douglas Kennedy
Parisian arrogance meant that nobody was important, nobody counted. — Douglas Kennedy
I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work. — Douglas Kennedy
I could hear him swallowing hard, trying not to cry. Why is it that we always try to be brave at moments when bravery is futile? — Douglas Kennedy
Success is a very fragile veneer. I get wary of people who embrace celebrity. It ruins people. — Douglas Kennedy
Because there is no meaning to be found in the arbitrary nature of things., It's all random. Just as space is blue. And birds fly through it. — Douglas Kennedy
Hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn't. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time — Douglas Kennedy
We try so hard to put our mark on things, we like to tell ourselves that what we do has import or will last. But the truth is, we're all just passing through. So little survives us. And when we're gone, it's simply the memory of others that keeps our time here alive. And when they're gone ... That's why - when I go - I'm asking that my dust gets tossed on the water. Because ends up floating away. — Douglas Kennedy
We can never change the story that made us what we are. It's a story accumulated by the manifold complexities-its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what happened to us. And we carry everywhere all that has shaped us-all that we lacked, all that we wanted but never got; all that we got but never wanted; all that was found and lost. — Douglas Kennedy
We seemed to possess a similar worldview: slightly jaded, fiercely independent ... — Douglas Kennedy
Once you've crossed over into that realm of nothingness, your story only really stays in the minds of those closest to you. And when they too vanish ... — Douglas Kennedy
We can rarely tell others what we really think about them
not just because it would so wound them, but also because it would so wound ourselves. — Douglas Kennedy
But the strangest of all sensations is the moment after you have been freed of the baby
and the baby of you
and you are handed this tiny shriveled creature to hold for the first time ... and you feel a mixture of unbelievable instant love and desperate fear. — Douglas Kennedy
We all want to fix things. Just as we all believe that so much in life can be rectified. Mend fences, build bridges, reach out, engage in mutual healing. — Douglas Kennedy
We all end up ruing everything. It's the nature of this thing we call 'our condition.' Could, but didn't ... Wanted to, but stopped myself ... All the damn statements of regret we can never dodge. — Douglas Kennedy
There are moments when you think you will cry forever. You never do. Eventually, sheer physical exhaustion forces you to stop, to settle, to becalm yourself amidst all the mad turbulence of bereavement. — Douglas Kennedy
We're all so preposterous, aren't we. Holding onto our traumas, our agonies, our small dramas and using them to sabotage that which we so want, and actually deserve. ' (Petra Dussman in 'The Moment') — Douglas Kennedy
Discipline is all about the imposition of control-the belief that, by following a precise regime and avoiding distractions, you can somehow keep the disorder of life at bay. — Douglas Kennedy
Biggest roadblocks you encounter in life are the ones you construct for yourself. — Douglas Kennedy
This means that time shrinks with the accumulation of years. Or, at least, that's the perception. And all perception is, by its own nature, open to individual interpretation. The empirical fact is that time does not elongate or shrink. A day will always have twenty-four hours, a wee seven days, a year three-hundred and sixty-five days. What does change is our awareness of its speed - and its increasing preciousness as commodity. — Douglas Kennedy
We all crave latitude in life, yet simultaneously dig ourselves deeper into domestic entrapment. We may dream of traveling light but accumulate as much as we can to keep us burdened and rooted to one spot. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Because-though we all muse on the theme of escape-we stil find the notion of responsibility irresistible. The career, the house, the dependents, the debt-it grounds us. Provides us with a necessary security, a reason to get upin the morning. It narrows choice and ergo, gives us certainty. And though just about every man I know rails against being so cul-de-saced by domesic burden, we all embrace it. Embrace it with a vengeance. — Douglas Kennedy
Money. The trickiest substance in life
as it's the way we keep score, measure our worth, and think we can control our destinies. Money: the essential lie. — Douglas Kennedy
The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else. — Douglas Kennedy