Jan Ellison Quotes & Sayings

How can I be certain I'm not manufacturing a memory to match the evidence? You can't rely on memory. You can't rely on ancient artifacts, either, to tell you a story you can live with. You can rely only on the sculpture of your life you carve out of the available material, the one that stands by while you muddle your way into your future. Patrick — Jan Ellison

What happens to a marriage? A persistent failure of kindness, triggered at first, at least in my case, by the inequities of raising children, the sacrifices that take a woman by surprise and that she expects to be matched by her mate but that biology ensures cannot be. Anything could set me off. Any innocuous habit or slight or oversight. The way your father left the lights of the house blazing, day and night. The way he could become so distracted at work that sometimes when I called, he'd put me on hold and forget me, only remembering again when I'd hung up and called back. The way he wore his pain so privately, whistling around the house after we'd had a spat, pretending nonchalance, protecting you and your sisters from discord, hiding behind his good nature, inadvertently — Jan Ellison

He had a strange way of talking, his head tucked into his neck and his eyes fixed in the empty space beyond, as if something were suspended there, ripe fruit or a glimmer of light, as if he were not quite brave enough, or perhaps too polite, to look a person in the eye. — Jan Ellison

Hope doesn't like to be beaten down, though, does it? Hope is what gets us through. Hope, and the prayer it wants to become. — Jan Ellison

After all, experiencing something is not the same as remembering it. A memory is by its nature a revision. — Jan Ellison

being born with only one kidney, occurring in roughly one in two thousand people. — Jan Ellison

It was pleasure derived not from parental pride, but from gratitude. We had been blessed by the existence on this earth of our three particular children, and we had been assigned a blessed task in keeping you all safe in the world. — Jan Ellison

I told him because I wanted what everybody wants - to be known. To know oneself, and to tell the whole story of that self, and to be loved anyway. — Jan Ellison

She moved across the pool deck with a languor, an unabashed sexual energy that made me feel like I was watching porn. — Jan Ellison

Denial, as any addict in recovery will tell you, is not defined as knowing something and pretending you don't; it is failing to see it at all. — Jan Ellison

He somehow knew it was more important to be reassuring, to seem to be in command of the situation, than to be right. And he was always willing to give in when he was found out to be wrong. The — Jan Ellison

He left without a smile, but he placed something in my chest, a hollow thing that left no room for the hope and happiness that had been condensing there. — Jan Ellison

People say a mother is only as happy as her least happy child. But what if the state of that child's happiness has become a mystery? What if that child is no longer a child but a young man who has removed himself to a great distance and encased himself in silence? — Jan Ellison

But this time it was her other self I saw, not the dark fairy of want but a middle-aged woman, like the woman I am now, plain, chastened, mortal. The — Jan Ellison

we can achieve happiness not by remaking ourselves, but by subverting unhappiness. — Jan Ellison

Perhaps blame is the way the universe organizes itself around tragedy and loss. Without blame, suffering is random, and that kind of randomness leads to madness. — Jan Ellison

When we arrived at the hospital, you were in a medically induced coma, which I was made to understand was a sort of freezing of you, a fabricated reprieve from your own body that would allow your internal organs to rest. — Jan Ellison

If, when I looked, I was not perfect, how could I be beautiful? And if I was not beautiful, how could I be loved? I was not the only woman who ran that script. — Jan Ellison

It seems to me now that what I wanted when I set off for Europe was not so much adventure as deliverance. — Jan Ellison

Actually, when a tree falls, it creates shock waves. And when the shock waves reach an ear or an artificial mechanism like a microphone, they're transmitted into what we call sound," you said. "The shock waves themselves are not sound. — Jan Ellison

Most never know the condition exists, because the single kidney grows large enough to accommodate — Jan Ellison

Where were all the people I loved? I could feel them, flung about, the distance between us a crushing weight that I myself had put there. — Jan Ellison

Such a terrible word, terminate. A word from a brave new world in which only the flawless are allowed to be born. — Jan Ellison

Love's young dream, alas is over
Yet my strains of love shall hover — Jan Ellison

It was so undignified and unnecessary, the way married people behaved. The indiscriminate airing of grievances, the incessant flinging of blame and complaint. Of course, I had no idea back then what a marriage required. How the resentments and oversights and misunderstandings could pile up, sometimes moving ordinary kindness beyond reach. Love piled up, too, if you were lucky, but it seemed to be locked away in a separate compartment, sometimes unreachable when it was needed most. — Jan Ellison

It's not always wise to assume that just because the surface of the world appears undisturbed, life is where you left it. — Jan Ellison

They say the human body can lose 50 percent of its body parts and survive. But it depends on which parts, and which body. — Jan Ellison

Not a day or an hour and sometimes not even a moment in advance did I have any idea what Patrick had in mind for me, or whether he had me in mind at all. This uncertainty lay like a sore under the surface of my skin, erupting again and again, then subsiding, but never healing. — Jan Ellison

Let's all throw unhappiness overboard. — Jan Ellison

The heart is large, and there is more than one material in the bucket we call love. — Jan Ellison

They say people who are bipolar see colors differently when in a manic state. What did Emme see when I showed her the photo a few days later? — Jan Ellison

Children will end up a world away, whether you want them to or not - unaware of the havoc being wreaked upon their histories back home. — Jan Ellison

We are only flesh and blood. We are only chemicals mixing and circuits firing, sometimes in disarray. We are, every last one of us, plagued by useless want. — Jan Ellison

All of it was rushing together, making a psychedelic mess of my heart. — Jan Ellison

I felt not jealousy so much as shame for not understanding the bond between them. The bond that was stalwart in the face of complacency and cruelty and wandering desire. The habit of each other that was the bedrock upon which they'd sunk the foundation of their mutual existence - and upon which they were standing, still. I — Jan Ellison

I closed my eyes. I dragged the memory of that day out of the darkness of time. I stepped through it, in my head, blurred image by blurred image, until finally, I saw it. — Jan Ellison

I suppose unrequited love is the hardest kind to shed because it is not really love at all. It is a half-love, and we are forever stomping around trying to get hold of the other half. — Jan Ellison

I suppose that unrequited love is the hardest kind to shed because it is not really love at all. It is a half-love, and we are forever stomping around trying to get ahold of the other half. — Jan Ellison

Unrequited love is the best kind of all. But I can tell you with certainty, Robbie, that the other kind of love, the kind I received from your father for more than two decades, is far more necessary. — Jan Ellison

Stories don't like to end when you want them to, do they? Loose ends aren't easy to snip with scissors or tuck inside a hem. They tempt you. They want you to keep pulling until there is nothing left to keep you warm. — Jan Ellison

I knew it wasn't the right kind of love, because it required nothing of me. I did not need to worry about keeping it alive or putting it out since it was kept alive quite independently of anything I might or might not do. He would not be someone who demanded anything of me. He would hold on to whatever pieces I offered him, however flawed they might be. It did not bind me to him - somehow, it freed me. Louise — Jan Ellison

It was possible to rush forward, looking back, and break your neck. — Jan Ellison