Susan Minot Quotes & Sayings

Between children and parents, there is a difficulty of seeing each other simply as people. — Susan Minot

I walk to think and not to think. When walking I remember things that are important to me.
I walk to forget. I have yet to set out on a walk in low spirits and return feeling worse than I did when I left the door. A change occurs between the fate and the porch, walking lifts the weight off the heart. Or as the writer Jim Harrison says, When you're out of sorts, walk a hundred miles. — Susan Minot

When a person you love moves by you with flat eyes that will not see you, it is a shock to believe it. — Susan Minot

Success did change me. You don't want it to, but it does. — Susan Minot

Our concerns aren't always appropriate or morally elevated. — Susan Minot

Recklessness is par for the course when you're 25. — Susan Minot

When I was in my teens and twenties, I could see friends expressing how radical they were, and I envied them, the way they lived, the way they dressed. Maybe there is a part of me that is reserved, even in rebellion. — Susan Minot

In general, my own experience of writing an adaptation of 'Evening' gave me a chance to get into different parts of the book. — Susan Minot

There is no good reason. Don't waste your life waiting for good reasons ... You'll wait and wait. — Susan Minot

I learned that if you love a boy you are o longer free. The boy may become more important than your own self and if it is so, you will find trouble there. The first time you are hurt in your heart, you do not forget the lesson. It stays forever. — Susan Minot

[The director's idea for the film was:] A young American or English girl goes to Tuscany to visit English expatriates. She is on a mission to lose her virginity. That's a mission easily accomplished, if that's the only mission. The story had to be more complicated than that. Because there is so little happening dramatically, there had to be something to keep you curious. — Susan Minot

Preserving that privacy between a writer and the work is important. You have to shut out all those voices that have reacted to your work. — Susan Minot

Illness can make us behave in the most surprising ways. — Susan Minot

I went to graduate school with zero expectation. I kind of backed into it. I wanted to go back to school because I felt gaps in my literary background. I studied mostly twentieth-century English literature in college, so I thought, 'Maybe I'll go back for my writing.' — Susan Minot

David Gulden captures animals in all their wonder and intrigue, without glorifying or romanticizing them. He knows Kenya's wildlife intimately, and it shows in the depth of his images. He has an artist's eye, which delivers beauty and transport in every picture. — Susan Minot

He had made his decision. Later in life Ann would learn that when certain men made decisions no matter how much it might torture them afterwards they would stick with their decision. Men, she learned, would rather suffer than change their minds or their habits. They could develop elaborate systems for containing pain, sometimes so successful they would remain completely unaware of the vastness of the pain they possessed. — Susan Minot

Writing an adaptation is not so much a collaboration as it is a series of steps. You're basically creating a blueprint for something else. — Susan Minot

Did people ever stop changing? They surprised you with fresh pain. Sometimes they surprised you with happiness, but the pain was the sharper surprise. There was no way to protect yourself from it. People could always change and always hurt you. Of course it went in the other direction too, you could hurt them when you didn't intend it and that too was out of your control. — Susan Minot

Most fiction comes from your experience. — Susan Minot

A free spirit's just an idiot who doesn't want to face reality. — Susan Minot

I love 'Anna Karenina.' It's in the top five books on my list. Tolstoy is unsurpassed in combining the grand with the trivial, that is, the small details which make up life. — Susan Minot

All her life she'd listened to talk, life was full of talk. People said things, true and interesting things and ridiculous things. Her father used to say they talked too much. There was much to say, she had said her share. How else was one to know a thing except by naming it? But words now fell so far from where life was. Words fell on a distant shore. It turned out there were other tracks on which life registered where things weren't acknowledged with words or given attention to or commented on. — Susan Minot

When I travel, I always take my Winsor & Newton watercolor kit, which is the size of a pack of cigarettes when folded up. I bought my first one in the 1980s. It was handy to bring on trips, and I packed it into a leather pouch along with a couple of brushes, a pencil, an eraser and paper. — Susan Minot

The teenager's room is her cave. It is here she can meet herself, undistracted by the new hassles life is making for her. Here, she can reflect. — Susan Minot

When I look through my sketchbooks, they bring back moments that I would otherwise have completely forgotten. — Susan Minot

I remember when I was in graduate school and someone in workshop would say, 'I'm going to bring in a chapter of my novel.' The thought that someone could think they'd write a whole long thing ... I could only see twelve pages ahead. But then I realized that if you could see twelve more after that, you can start. — Susan Minot

I would have fallen in love with you anywhere. — Susan Minot

The idea that there is a family somewhere who functions is an odd concept. — Susan Minot

Recording a scene with paint rather than film sinks you more deeply into your surroundings. You have to look a little harder and a little longer. And you end up with a memento. — Susan Minot

Minimalism has a connotation of being reductive, and not in the best way. 'Brevetist' is a better term. I'm trying to be as concise as possible and still getting across to the reader. When information is delivered in that way, it is very satisfying to me. — Susan Minot

Desire suppressed finds its way into other more surreal settings, into dreams. — Susan Minot

It occurred to her how some people continued through no design of one's own to be in one's life while others might initially enter in a sort of blaze and seem to change everything but then might not stay around. — Susan Minot

She thought of how much people changed you. It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn't true. It was only through other people that one ever did change. — Susan Minot

Off the packed trail we experience the miracle of corn snow, skiing atop the crust, like skiing on an eggshell that has been sprinkled with sugar. — Susan Minot

So many things in this world were cracked and sad, and still a glowing showed through and moments came when everything was lit and love happened. Every tree stood where it belonged, each bird had perfect feathers folded against its tiny body, each holding a heart beating madly. Life was a vibration of light and dark, and love illuminated that life. Then darkness descended and your heart was ripped apart. So that was part of it, a requirement of the miracle. Death stayed, lurking in the shadow of beauty. In the bargain, life both had meaning and had none. So, she kept thinking, what to do? What to do? A pressure in her would not stop asking. There were not many things she could make better, not many things she could change. And yet ... and yet ... sparks of possibility still shot out. Unasked for, they came and randomly flew up. — Susan Minot

A struggle, to the person experiencing it, is a struggle. — Susan Minot

For a girl, with each boy it's as though a petal gets plucked each time. — Susan Minot

After she was gone there would be no one who knew the whole of her life. She did not even know the whole of it! Perhaps she should have written some of it down ... but really what would have been the point in that? Everything passed, she would too. This perspective offered her an unexpected clarity she nearly enjoyed, but even with this new clarity the world offered no more explanation for itself than it ever had. — Susan Minot

Where were you all this time? she said. Where have you been?
I guess far away.
Yes you were. Too far away.
They sat in silence.
You know you frightened me a little, she said. At the beginning.
No.
You did.
He smiled at that.
You looked as if you didnt anyone, she said.
But this are the ones who need the most, he said. Don't you know that?
I do know, she said. Too late. — Susan Minot

The past was speaking ... what was the difference now? She had the feeling she'd walked into a house she thought she knew well and discovered a room she hadn't seen before. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe they did have a chance. — Susan Minot

A lot of readers want characters to behave in a responsible way, or they want to understand the characters' dilemma and act, in a way, on their behalf. — Susan Minot

Painting keeps me occupied in those moments when travel can be aimless and even disorienting. Mainly it is a way to register at least some of the new impressions of a foreign place, when its thrilling barrage can sometimes overwhelm you. — Susan Minot

When I was younger, I suppose I was interested in checking out as much about writing as I could: bad, weird, irritating, even things not-to-my-taste. Now I am less open. I will decide after a few pages if I want to stay in the world of the book, and if I don't, I put it down. I have less time left. — Susan Minot

I first travelled to Africa at the end of 1996 and was immediately captivated. I had planned on a three-week trip, and I ended up staying two months. — Susan Minot

People can have a variety of concerns at the same time. Even those undergoing grave or traumatic experiences will acknowledge the need for lightness or even entertainment. — Susan Minot

So many bad things happen in this world because people don't know how to express things. — Susan Minot

[She] felt as if she were both a stranger to herself and more herself than she'd ever been. — Susan Minot

Writing chases after the senses, and conveys them in an altered form. When it is done well, the senses come alive in a new and captured form. — Susan Minot

'Monkeys' is made up of nine short stories that tell an overall story. 'Folly' is a series of vignettes all put together to tell a larger story. In 'Lust and Other Stories,' there are nine stories - three, three, three; the beginnings of love, the middles, and the afters. — Susan Minot

The word dysfunction has, I think, served its purpose and now has lost its meaning. Every family, like every person, is imperfect, after all. The idea that there is a family somewhere who functions, is an odd concept. In my youth I was running from my family to try to find out who I was-their influence distracted me. Now I see what a powerful hold they have, no matter what. — Susan Minot

Boy poison - a boy's kisses were like a poison, which infected you and after you were exposed you craved more, like an addict. — Susan Minot

Longing, for everyone, is always there, isn't it? More intense at some times than others. You get closer to less longing - an odd metaphoric phrasing, I realize - then, you are further and longing more than ever again. — Susan Minot

There are aspects of love that I once undervalued. Kindness. Having a sort of honor when love is on the table. — Susan Minot

Families are endlessly fascinating. We all have one, and they have a great impact on who we are and what we do - Freudian as that is. — Susan Minot

Unless you were high up in a building or happened to glimpse it at the end of one of the big avenues going east-west, all you knew of the sunset was a darkening in the air. No wonder people in New York were so unbalanced. They were totally untouched by the rhythms of nature. You were only aware of nature when something extreme happened, like a snowstorm or heatwave. — Susan Minot

Change and renewal are themes in life, aren't they? We keep growing throughout life. — Susan Minot

Hope is a terrible thing, she said. Is it? Yes, it keep you living in another place, a place which doesn't exist. For some people it's better than where they are. For many it's a relief. From life, she said. A relief from life? Is that living? Some people don't have a choice. No and that's awful for them. Hope is better than misery, he said. Or despair. Hope belongs in the same box as despair. Hope is not so bad, he said. At least despair has truth to it. — Susan Minot

I don't consider the first-world concerns any less important than the third-world ones. — Susan Minot

After the briskness of loving, loving stops. And you roll over with death stretched out alongside you like a feather boa, or a snake, light as air, and you ... you don't even ask for anything or try to say something to him because it's obviously your own damn fault. You haven't been able to- to what? To open your heart. You open your legs but can't, or don't dare anymore, to open your heart. — Susan Minot