Marra Quotes & Sayings

There was a time when she had indulged in the hypothetical for hours a day, plotting the map that had led her here. But no life is a line, and hers was an uneven orbit around a dark star, a moth circling a dead bulb, searching for the light it once held. — Anthony Marra

She praised his book and he embraced her from gratitude rather than lust, but she didn't let go. Neither did he. She kissed his cheek, his earlobe. For months they'd run their fingers around the hem of their affection without once acknowledging the fabric. The circumference of the world tightened to what their arms encompassed. She sat on the desk, between the columns of read and unread manuscript, and pulled him toward her by his index fingers. — Anthony Marra

We twist our souls around each other's miseries. — Anthony Marra

I may be an idiot," he said gravely, "but I would never eat a hamburger cooked by a clown. — Anthony Marra

There was something about the idea of Russia that I found very intriguing, and I think I had romanticized it a lot. — Anthony Marra

With red ink, and referred to it nightly. Life: a constellation of vital phenomena - organization, irritability, movement, — Anthony Marra

She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent. — Anthony Marra

Carrying that lumber the forty meters from the forest had left his knuckles blistered, his underarms sopping, but now a few hours of flames had lifted what had taken him months to design, weeks to carry, days to build, all but the nails and rivets, all but the hinges and bolts, all into the sky. — Anthony Marra

While looking up news from the North Caucasus on Twitter, I was linked to the sanguinely titled 'Seven Wonders of Chechnya Tour' on the website of Chechnya Travel, the postwar republic's first tourism outfit, founded in 2012. — Anthony Marra

In the flash there's no final thought, no final reflection, just the breath carried from her body on the back of the bullet. — Anthony Marra

The calcium in collarbones I have kissed. The iron in the blood flushing those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are. — Anthony Marra

She stood back and wiped the sweat-sting from her eyes. The air was clean. Her hands brown with dirt. Pride surged through her, raw and immense; she had believed happiness to be an absence - of fear, of pain, of grief - but here it roared in her as powerful as any sadness. — Anthony Marra

I'm wondering when you hit the age where people say, 'Oh, OK, he's not so young.' — Anthony Marra

He spent the morning following her, nodding politely as she denounced the Russians for various earthly ills, and a few - volcanoes, winter, her arthritic hips - that fell within God's jurisdiction. — Anthony Marra

God had pulled her through a needle's eye so narrow that this thread in front of them was all that remained. — Anthony Marra

She was fluent in four languages and yet her fists against the rusted hood were the fullest articulation of her defeat. — Anthony Marra

Her mother stared in quiet awe of this more artful rearrangement of her genetic code, and slipped into a contentedness that usually appeared only after the red wine had fallen below the bottle label. — Anthony Marra

Time became more important the closer to death one was, so an extra few hours to make peace with the world were worth more than years. — Anthony Marra

We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A — Anthony Marra

Never forget the first three letters of confidence. — Anthony Marra

Too young to explain in words, the girl's face was old enough to show the loss that was that name. — Anthony Marra

When I visited Chechnya, I was taken aback at first because people would regularly make jokes about kidnapping me. — Anthony Marra

Endurance, I reminded myself, is the true measure of existence. — Anthony Marra

To live with dignity meant a premature death. — Anthony Marra

Chechnya forms the bookends to Tolstoy's career. He began writing his first novel, 'Childhood,' while in Starogladovskaya in Northern Chechnya, and his final novel, 'Hadji Murad,' is set in the Russo-Chechen War of the 19th century. — Anthony Marra

And in the middle of the lake the woman I'd spoken with floated on her back, eyes closed, as if nothing in her many years had ever gone wrong. — Anthony Marra

Our children forever changed our relationships with our mothers. Pity replaced the mild contempt with which we had previously regarded them, and we loved them as we never had before, as we could only love ourselves, because despite our best intentions we had become them. — Anthony Marra

He's an excellent listener. Most cats are. Except Siameses, the chatty little bastards. I — Anthony Marra

Everyone knew Sonja was destined for great things, but no one knew what to do with her until then. Even in academia, her natural habitat, she was an exotic species. Though her Russianness gave her certain dispensations, the idea that a young woman of any ethnicity could so excel in the hard sciences was a far-fetched fantasy. Their parents encouraged her at a distance. Neither understood the molecular formulas, electromagnetic fields, or anatomical minutiae that so captivated her, and so their support came by way of well-intentioned, inadequate generalities. Even after Sonja graduated secondary school at the top of her class and matriculated to the city university biology department, their parents found more to love in Natasha. Sonja's gifts were too complex to be understood, and therefore less desirable. Natasha was beautiful and charming. They didn't need MDs to know how to be proud of her. — Anthony Marra

No one can take what's inside your head once it's there. — Anthony Marra

On December 9, 1994, Yeltsin issued a statement ordering the Federal army to execute the disarmament of all illegal armed units in Chechnya, or as they were known locally, the government. — Anthony Marra

My work often begins as little internal dares, wondering if I can pull something off. So I spent a few years drawing these stories together, trying to build a Pangea of what began as separate continents. — Anthony Marra

The past few months have been the most serene of his adult life. The megalopolis in his mind has quieted to a country road. He does his work, he eats his bread, and he sleeps with the knowledge that today hasn't added to the sum of human misery. For now at least it's peace of a kind he hadn't imagined himself worthy of receiving. — Anthony Marra

If there is an operation, and if that operation is successful, she says she will move to Sweden. I fear for her future in a country whose citizenry is forced to assemble its own furniture. — Anthony Marra

The botanist was a decent man, but Khassan was in love, and thus capable of infinite hate. — Anthony Marra

I stopped by Politics & Prose to sign a few copies of 'Constellation.' A couple days later, I learned that Barack Obama also stopped by and left with one of them. — Anthony Marra

Akhmed's eight-day-old eyes had held the reflection of ten thousand possible lives. Khassan wasn't an emotive or superstitious man, and nothing like it had ever happened again, but he had found, layered in the infant's half-lidded eyes, innumerable, wanting faces, none of which he had recognized. — Anthony Marra

The previous night, for the first time in a long time, he had felt whole, and his eyes returned to the rearview, where his dignity was held within a few square centimeters of glass. — Anthony Marra

Grammar was the only place the girl could keep her father alive. — Anthony Marra

Turning I would to I did is the grammar of growing up. — Anthony Marra

Natasha tried to wedge herself into the conversation, but as usual the triangle would not widen into a square. p.302 — Anthony Marra

I'm a little disappointed. You spent five years in London and all I get is a doll?" "The real gift was my absence." Finally, a smile. — Anthony Marra

If he had the cleft tongue of a devil, or the snake hair of a Medusa, or the matted hair of a wolf-monster, Akhmed might understand. But Ramazan had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, pairs of arms and legs and ears, hair greasy, but not slimy and certainly not slithering, and Akhmed did not understand. — Anthony Marra

When the newborn sniffed strangely at her chest, she stared into its eyes and saw a world only two days old. Those two and a half kilograms righted her, turned her vantage to a future kinder than experience had taught her to expect. — Anthony Marra

Sometimes his expired faith in rational logic revives itself long enough to believe in points ... but in the end he always ends up feeling like an asshole for thinking any of the pain he either inflicts or endures has meaning beyond the senseless fact of its existence. — Anthony Marra

It's hard to think of another body of work that is more universally beloved - I don't think I've ever met someone who has encountered 'Calvin and Hobbes' without falling for them. — Anthony Marra

Nothing, she now knew, could be defined in exclusion, and every bug, pencil, and grass blade was a dictionary in itself, requiring the definitions of all things to fulfill its own. — Anthony Marra

My Seryozha. My holy little fool. You've spent these last few years working so hard to become an asshole. Despite your best efforts, you're becoming a man instead. And I know you want to become so great an asshole that centuries from now people will speak of wiping their Sergeis. But you're not an asshole. You're my son. So when you want to disgrace yourself, remember, little one, that you are all of your father's pride. — Anthony Marra

For the first time in his life he believed without reservation in the existence of a kind and generous God, as desert thirst teaches one to believe in rain. — Anthony Marra

We tend to associate humor with lightheartedness, but really, it's a rhetorical mode than can be applied to any subject. It was through researching Chechnya that I came to understand this. — Anthony Marra

There were these things and the flames ate these things, and since fire doesn't distinguish between the word of God and the word of the Soviet Communications Registry Bureau, both Qur'an and telephone directory returned to His mouth in the same inhalation of smoke. — Anthony Marra

Medical miracles are the only miracles most of us will ever see." He — Anthony Marra

I'm overcome by the inexplicable desire to speak to you with common courtesy. — Anthony Marra

Research is not an obstacle, something to be frightened of. It can be one of the real joys of writing. — Anthony Marra

After crossing herself, she lay back on the divan and squirted a cool puddle of hand lotion from the bottle she'd brought from London. Invariably she would apply too much, and her hands would be slick and shiny in the candlelight as she asked for another pair with which to share the excess. — Anthony Marra

Even after Sonja graduated secondary school at the top of her class and matriculated to the city university biology department, their parents found more to love in Natasha. Sonja's gifts were too complex to be understood, and therefore less desirable. — Anthony Marra

Her father was the face of her morning and night, he was everything, so saturating Havaa's world that she could no more describe him than she could the air. — Anthony Marra

How often is immense sadness mistaken for courage? — Anthony Marra

You have waited for me past the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, past each of Saturn's rings. It's ridiculous, so stupid, I know, to cross the entire solar system just to hear you and Galina butcher Tchaikovsky. If ever there was an utterance of perfection, it is this. If God has a voice, it is ours. — Anthony Marra

Her father was her door to the world; he was the singular opening through which she saw, heard, and felt. Without him she didn't know what she saw, or what she heard, and what she felt; all she felt, was him gone. — Anthony Marra

As the saw teeth caught on the bone, she had performed a second surgery, one less bloody but no less brutal, excising from his heart the impulse to run, to cower, to let the man bleed to death rather than face the horror of saving him. The amputation had left both patients lighter. p 121-122 — Anthony Marra

I joined a writing class at a nearby community center, where I was the youngest participant by about 40 years. Once a week, I'd funnel down a staircase and join the dozen retirees crowded in folding chairs around a table to discuss one another's stories. — Anthony Marra

Entire years had passed when he was rich enough in time to disregard the loose change of a minute, but now he obsessed over each one, this minute, the next minute, the one following, all of which were different terms for the same illusion. — Anthony Marra

Everything large enough to love eventually disappoints you, then betrays you, and finally, forgets you. But the things small enough to fit into a shoebox, these stay as they were. — Anthony Marra

I never imagined that something as solemn and final as death could be this idiotic. It was the keyhole through which I first glimpsed life's madness: the
institutions we believe in will pervert us, our loved ones will fail us, and death is a falling piano. — Anthony Marra

But the terrible past of nighttime disappearances was locked within the pages of that history book; she never imagined she would one day disappear as easily as her forefathers. — Anthony Marra

Wealth announces itself with what's easy to break and impossible to clean. The chairs were all curvy works of art that turned sitting into yoga exercises. — Anthony Marra

When confronted with the facts of foreign atrocities, the experience is often consigned to the realm of the unimaginable. Fiction makes the unimaginable imaginable. — Anthony Marra

The portrait artist must acknowledge human complexity with each brushstroke. The eyes, nose and mouth that compose a sitter's face, just like the suffering and joy that compose his soul, are similar to those of ten million others yet still singular to him. This acknowledgment is where art begins. It may also be where mercy begins. If criminals drew the faces of their victims before perpetrating their crimes and judges drew the faces of the guilty before sentencing them, then there would be no faces for executioners to draw. — Anthony Marra

This should be a librarian's job, of course, but you can't trust people who read that much. — Anthony Marra

You remain the hero of your own story even when you become the villain of someone else's. — Anthony Marra

Maybe we try to find them in other people. In kindness and generosity; those things don't disappear. — Anthony Marra

We took a sledgehammer to the rules of English and reassembled the pieces into a language only we understood. — Anthony Marra

They never said it, Ramzan never thanked him for it, but they both knew that the week he spent treating the infection was just that. If a stranger were to put his ear in the space between them, he would hear the dull roar of that knowledge. — Anthony Marra

A lizard fucks a crab and nine months later a turtle pops out. It's called evolution. — Anthony Marra

Happiness came in moments of unpredictable loveliness. — Anthony Marra

He asked them to close their eyes, and hoped their mouths would follow suit. p. 137 — Anthony Marra

He had learned well: made a board of the village, a pawn of the master. — Anthony Marra

You are mine. I recognize you. We twist our souls around each other's miseries. It is that which makes us family. — Anthony Marra

She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her tongue until they dissolved into fluency. — Anthony Marra

We should all be so lucky to get from life a sunny-day swim in chemical waste. — Anthony Marra

Havaa, standing on a stepstool and stirring the broth, found an unfamiliar gratitude for the smallness of her life. Everywhere beyond these four walls smelled of smoke and gasoline, but here, no calamity was greater than an egg falling to the floor. — Anthony Marra

Sleep just a while longer, that's it, where else can you go where you neither suffer nor cause suffering. — Anthony Marra

But no matter how many ways she dismembered and quantified the body lying beside her, she couldn't say how many years the girl would wait before she married, if at all, or how many children she would have, if any; and between the creation of this body and its end lay the mystery the girl would spend her life solving. For now, she slept. — Anthony Marra

This incomprehensible war would take from him even the humanity to find it incomprehensible. — Anthony Marra

When you're writing in big block paragraphs, you can afford to have a redundant sentence now and then, but the Twitter format requires concision. — Anthony Marra

I have human friends, obviously. But everything's easier with a cat. He wants a little fish soup in a saucer and the occasional scratch on the head. I want the illusion that an animal bred to trade affection for food can understand the inquietudes of my soul. — Anthony Marra

A meteorologist might beg to differ, but weather prediction was an act of infidel witchcraft that could not be trusted. — Anthony Marra

The girl's face hollowed with resignation; it had been a long time, but Sonja remembered what it was to have that face, what it was to feel you were no brighter than the dumbest man, no stronger than the weakest boy, and with those ideas crowding your head no wonder subordination was the only inevitable outcome. — Anthony Marra

Invader and invaded held on to their fistfuls of earth, but in the end, the earth outlived the hands that held it. — Anthony Marra

There's no working radio tower in the country. It's all static," she said, without looking to him. "I know. But 102.3 plays the best. Not too tinny. Full and robust. If a cello were to perform static, it would sound like this." She shook her head and turned the dial. "I prefer 93.9," she said. She still hadn't looked at him. "It's too thin and monotone. There's no variation. It just sounds like static." "And that's why I like it," she said. "It sounds like static is supposed to sound. — Anthony Marra

He had memorized the entire Qur'an and lectured on the nature of evil, which, like a shadow, cannot exist independently of the good silhouettes. — Anthony Marra

In the months before the repatriation her heart had hardened around her sister's absence, letting her love Natasha in memory as she could never love her in reality. — Anthony Marra

There's nothing quite like the sight of two dozen half-naked octogenarians. We enter the stage of life as dolls and exit as gargoyles. — Anthony Marra

Life: a constellation of vital phenomena - organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation. — Anthony Marra

Turning I would into I did is the grammar of growing up. — Anthony Marra

We know the meaning of nothing but the words we use to describe it. — Anthony Marra

You will have the last word.' 'Your name will be that word. — Anthony Marra

Kilometers above, men who didn't know her name wanted to kill her — Anthony Marra

Calvin and Hobbes are the only two characters from my childhood reading that I return to with any regularity, and they have grown with me, yielding newer and deeper meaning. — Anthony Marra