Wally Lamb Quotes

First I laughed my way through Elinor Lipman's book of political tweets. Then I put my ear to the ground and listened to Molly Ivins guffawing from the grave. Lipman is a piquant poetic rock star!

All the dead bolts, pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.

If you risked love, it took you wherever you wanted to go. If you repressed it, you ended up unhappy.

Hardest thing: creating something out of nothing - the first draft is torturous.

As my early drawings warned me, where humans go, lions and tidal waves follow.

Love stories are probably all Ive ever been able to write or want to write.

If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and do something about them.

If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it.

Love is like breathing, you take it in and let it out.

I am a plodder, I make an appointment with my computer everyday and I have no idea where I am going.

Life is a whoopee cushion, a chair pulled away just as you were taking a seat.

I work hard, do my best and send it out to the world hoping that people can relate to it. I accept any reaction and hope they think it is worth reading.

Connecticut is in my blood.

Religion's just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all.

Love comes in far more shapes and sizes than what the family-values crowd condones, of course.

With destruction comes renovation.

So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.

I won't read novels while writing novels.

I think... the secret is to just settle for the shape of your life takes...Instead of you know, always waiting and wishing for what might make you happy.

I need to get lost and sometimes my characters lead me to places I don't expect to go.

Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That's what life's all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.

A woman who surrenders her freedom need not surrender her dignity.

I write to find out what the story means to me, that is what I try to do especially with the first draft.

I'm a very rooted person. I grew up in Norwich, Connecticut, I still live in Connecticut.

My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry.... Where could my heart find refuge from itself? Where could I go, yet leave myself behind?

I thought about how love was always the thing that did that - smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt.

I love revising. If you demystify the process, it comes down to four strategies: what can I do to make the draft better; what should I cut out to make it stronger; what do I need to do to clarify it; and finally, what should I reposition.

When I was a kid, I was surrounded by girls: older sisters, older girl cousins just down the street... except for an older boy named Vito who threw rocks. Each year I would wish for a baby brother. It never happened.

Dialogue comes naturally to me and I can hear the characters' voices in the scenes.

I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing.

I wanted to connect a modern story with a myth that I had read.

I try to stick with what moves me or teaches me about myself, same thing I hope the novels do for others.

Change what you can, accept what you can't, and be smart enough to know the difference

When I was a kid... I needed to belong.

The point is this: that the stream of memory may lead you to the river of understanding. And understanding, in turn, may be a tributary to the river of forgiveness.

Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.

The greatest griefs are silent.

But I think this: that whatever prices I've paid, whatever sorrows I shoulder, well, I have blessings, too. Not just my family now, but the others-the ones who have died...They're with me still. They're here...

My Italian-American heritage, of which I'm very proud and with which I identify strongly, surfaces in several of my novels.

The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.

Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words.

Its the most breathtakingly ironic things about living: the fact that we are all-identical twins included-alone. Singular. And yet what we seek-what saves us-is our connection to others.

I try to find something that applies not to me only, but to others, but don't try to control it too much. Essentially it is about what moves us, teaches us about ourselves.

I love the most the students with troubled lives.

But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?

However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.

I don't know. Maybe we're all chaos theorists. Lovers of pattern and predictability, we're scared shitless of explosive change. But we're fascinated by it, too. Drawn to it. Travelers tap their brakes to ogle the mutilation and mangled metal on the side of the interstate, and the traffic backs up for miles. Hijacked planes crash into skyscrapers, breached levees drown a city, and CNN and the networks rush to the scene so that we can all sit in front of our TVs and feast on the footage. Stare, stunned, at the pandemonium--the devils let loose from their cages.

I usually learn more from the situations I hate than the ones I love.