Maile Meloy Quotes & Sayings

I baptize you in the name of the conservation of energy. What comes around goes around. — Maile Meloy

Chet suddenly wished she had quit teaching the class because of him, that he'd had any effect on her at all. — Maile Meloy

We're creating little hedonists,' Frank used to say. 'Nothing will be as pleasurable as this for the rest of their lives. They'll search everywhere for something that can measure up, and nothing will. — Maile Meloy

The role of the human brain was to rationalize suffering. — Maile Meloy

Diabetes is passed that way
over and down, like a knight in chess. — Maile Meloy

He was acting like the man he wanted to be, in hopes that he could become him. He would keep acting until he couldn't stand it anymore, and then he would be the man he was. — Maile Meloy

When they started to drain a swamp where birds and fish had lived, for a new housing development down the road from his apartment, Steven watched the protests and the preparations with interest. The bird people were furious, the developers unmovable, and Steven was filled with relief that the fight wasn't his. Nothing here was his ... He thought there should have been something sad about how little he was tied up with the place, but instead it felt like freedom. He was free because it wasn't his water here, and they weren't his fish. — Maile Meloy

The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way? — Maile Meloy

All the while, Everett felt both the threat of disorder and the steady, thrumming promise of having everything he wanted, all at once. — Maile Meloy

Whenever we tamper with natural laws, there are consequences," the count said. "The larger the disruption, the larger the consequence. — Maile Meloy

We have to think of a question that we wouldn't otherwise want to answer.'
He stood over the pot, looking down at the leaves. 'Something like, Who do you fancy?'
'That might work,' I said, even though it was the last question I wanted to answer. But it was impossible, suddenly, to tell a lie.
Benjamin took a deep sniff over the steam and turned to me. 'All right,' he said. 'So who do you fancy?'
I hesitated. 'Fancy means like, right?' I said stalling.
'Of course.'
I gritted my teeth against the answer coming out. but I couldn't stop myself. 'You,' I said helplessly. — Maile Meloy

His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him. — Maile Meloy

I guess if everyone was blind, and you tried to describe vision to them, it would sound crazy and made up. — Maile Meloy

He held his hands tightly together and cursed his daughter for bringing the terrible world, with its humiliation and longing, back to his door. — Maile Meloy

To be a kid is to be invisible and to listen, and to interpret things that aren't necessarily meant for you to hear
because how else do you find out about the world? — Maile Meloy

Children were experiments, and his had failed. — Maile Meloy

Now, alone on the roof, Valentine looked at her shoes and wished people would either stay or go away, but not constantly coming back and leaving again. — Maile Meloy

I settled in with The Uninvited Guests thinking I knew what kind of Edwardian pleasures were in store: the fraught dinner party in an endangered, rambling house, the feuding family, the rich suitor, the disruptive visitors. The novel has all of those delightful things, but it also defied every one of my expectations. I saw none of it coming. I read it in one breathless sitting, and finished wanting to give it to everyone I know. — Maile Meloy

She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was. — Maile Meloy

Yvette had never talked about her marriage - she was a smart girl, and she knew you had no right to complain about someone you got all the way to the altar with. You made that choice, even if you were a child when you did it, and the marriage vow was sacred. — Maile Meloy

At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed. — Maile Meloy