Alther Quotes & Sayings

We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things. — Lisa Alther

For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk. It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this: that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in. 'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem. And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world. — Julia Alvarez

Dying was apparently a weaning process; all the attachments to familiar people and objects have to be undone. — Lisa Alther

Depression was a very active state really. Even if you appeared to an observer to be immobilized, your mind was in a frenzy of paralysis. You were unable to function, but were actively despising yourself for it. — Lisa Alther

If you kept moving, you never had to mourn what you were leaving behind. — Lisa Alther

If we create a generation of men who aren't getting an education, that's bad for women. — Michael Gurian

No pain was permanent, and no loss was real. That even though people treated each other abominably, even though they left, even though you let them go, even though you never laid eyes on them again, this fugue that linked you continued, whether you liked it or not. — Lisa Alther

Successful parenting was like log rolling, and she'd often landed in the drink. — Lisa Alther

The U.S.'s major strength factor and weapon is its economy. If you cripple it, you cripple the military. — Chester W. Nimitz

I wrote for twelve years and collected 250 rejection slips before getting any fiction published, so I guess outside reinforcement isn't all that important to me. — Lisa Alther

Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you. — Lisa Alther

One didn't issue instructions to comets. Grown children did what they had to do, and parents could only grit their teeth and watch and pray for them to get through it. — Lisa Alther

It was true. There really was no limit to the ways in which you could say the wrong thing to your children. You offered an olive branch and it was the wrong olive branch at the wrong time. — Mark Haddon

You can have small moments of happiness in life. You certainly can't expect years and years of it. — Donatella Versace

The French would eat anything that couldn't outrun them. — Lisa Alther

I always thought it was a question of achieving some permanent state of tranquillity ... but it's not. It's more like learning to surf. The waves keep rolling in, each different from the last, and you have to ride them, instead of getting pounded to bits. — Lisa Alther

She was part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence. — Upton Sinclair

It had been fourteen years and I hadn't had anything published. I had 250 rejection slips. I got my first novel published and it was called Kinflicks. It turned out to be a best seller. — Lisa Alther

A snake will always be a snake, even if you put a chain around its neck and try to make it walk upright. — Lisa Alther

And I still don't understand the purpose of a wedding. What could possibly induce two free beings to partner only with each other for the rest of their existence? — Helene Wecker

The human organism has only so much energy at its disposal. If you divert a great deal of it into any one channel, you can expect the others to collapse or atrophy. If you squander your vital energies on your emotional life, as you have been doing, plan to be physically and mentally bankrupt, as it were. — Lisa Alther

Ideally, Competition should be a wonderful vicious circle of being inspired and inspiring others to achieve excellence and being the best version of themselves. — Tina Sequeira

Inspiration never arrived when you were searching for it. — Lisa Alther

Been having a fight with your blankets, Septimus?" A familiar voice echoed down the chimney. "Looks like you lost," the voice continued with a chuckle. "Not wise to take on a pair of blankets, lad. One, maybe, but two blankets always gang up on you. Vicious things, blankets. — Angie Sage

Total self acceptance is empowering. It means allowing others to see you as they choose, without being offended. — Deepak Chopra

What a surprise to find you could shift the contents of your head like rearranging furniture in a room. — Lisa Alther

Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease. — Lisa Alther

What stands most explicitly as critique in Nietzsche's late work in not a development from earlier interests but a return to two problems of enduring personal involvement for him, those of Wagner and of Christianity. Der Antichrist , to take one case, is not a response to a resuscitating public interest in Christian religion; it is primarily a renewed attempt to resolve for himself the question of piety. — John Carroll

If this was adulthood, the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that now she could eat dessert without eating her vegetables. — Lisa Alther

The strength you've insisted on assigning to others is actually within yourself. — Lisa Alther

The requirements of romantic love are difficult to satisfy in the back seat of a Dodge Dart. — Lisa Alther

Whatever I experienced in the world that I didn't understand I'd invent a story and workout my understanding of something through the story. — Lisa Alther

That's the risk you take if you change: that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along. — Lisa Alther

Summer-we all have seen-
A few of us-believed-
A few the more aspiring
Unquestionably loves ... — Emily Dickinson

When someone is suffering, you have to see this in the body and the face. I say all the time that actors use their bodies like objects of war. — Monica Bellucci

I think 'The Avengers' is a Black Widow movie. She saves the day. And if you take her out, the plot does not function. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic. — Lisa Alther

The only obvious advantage to being an adult is that you can eat your dessert without haying sampled the vegetables. — Lisa Alther