Emily Fridlund Quotes & Sayings

Nothing is something after all. There's math that proves this, of course, but also observations. I know it seems like math and observations are opposites. — Emily Fridlund

Maybe there is a way to climb above everything, some special ladder or insight, some optical vantage point that allows a clear, unobstructed view of things. — Emily Fridlund

By their nature, it came to me, children were freaks. They believed impossible things to suit themselves, thought their fantasies were the center of the world. They were the best kinds of quacks, if that's what you wanted - pretenders who didn't know they were pretending at all. — Emily Fridlund

Later, I could get that drizzle feeling just about any time I saw a kid on a swing. The hopelessness of it - the forward excitement, the midflight return. The futile belief that the next time around, the next flight forward, you wouldn't get dragged back again. You wouldn't have to start over, and over. — Emily Fridlund

and all he wanted was a half hour with his mother before bed. And all he had in the world was the ability to throw a tantrum. We — Emily Fridlund

but I never said a thing about Patra and Paul, and I never told her what I really thought about Christian Science, which is that from what I know, from what little I know, it offers one of the best accounts of the origin of human evil. This — Emily Fridlund

It seemed unfair to me that people couldn't be something else just by working at it hard, by saying it over and over. — Emily Fridlund

He wore a candy-cane scarf and a red pom-pom hat. Every time the wind started up, his pom bounced on the air like a bobber. — Emily Fridlund

I didn't need to think of myself as a walleye drifting along in a current somewhere, just waiting for my hook. I was yearning for it. * — Emily Fridlund

We need to know the truth of that, pray to understand that death is just the false belief that anything could ever end. There's no going anywhere for any of us, not in reality. There's only changing how you see things." I — Emily Fridlund

Of course, things always seem more impressive when you're a little kid. — Emily Fridlund

Winter collapsed on us that year. It knelt, exhausted, and stayed. — Emily Fridlund

Heaven and hell are ways of thinking. Death is the false belief that anything could ever end. — Emily Fridlund

I mean, you have to ask yourself, from the beginning, what do you think you know?" The — Emily Fridlund

She looked at Paul with a face broken open, with a look of utter love and desolation, as if she'd given him everything in the ten minutes she'd known him, and he'd taken it, oh, he'd taken it anyhow, knowing just how much it cost. I — Emily Fridlund

Lin-da." He parted the syllables very slightly, as with a comb. — Emily Fridlund

Maybe if I'd been someone else I'd see it differently. But isn't that the crux of the problem? Wouldn't we all act differently if we were someone else? — Emily Fridlund

He was so naked his skin looked like clothes to me. He seemed sealed up in a very tight pink suit, without a wrinkle or a seam to be found. Wet — Emily Fridlund

It was like so many other things between us, that gift. It was exactly right and totally wrong for me. That — Emily Fridlund

So many people, even now, admire privation. They think it sharpens you, the way beauty does, into something that might hurt them. They calculate their own strengths against it, unconsciously, preparing to pity you or fight. Like — Emily Fridlund

He said if he were lucky enough to get back to the car, it would be because of Lily's kindness and mercy. He wanted her to know how grateful he was - in advance. Before he unzipped his pants, before he said just a kiss and pushed her down, he wanted her to know she had a choice. — Emily Fridlund

You know how summer goes. You yearn for it and yearn for it, but there's always something wrong. Everywhere you look, there are insects thickening the air, and birds rifling trees, and enormous, heavy leaves dragging down branches. You want to trammel it, wreck it, smash things down. The afternoons are so fat and long. You want to see if anything you do matters. * — Emily Fridlund