Some Good Words from Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy:
How is it that all of us were caught together in that brief moment of time, me standing there pretending I wasn't hurt by a single thing in this world while they lined up for their turn on the pony...all of them neatly, at my insistence, one in front of the other, like all the days ahead.
Sometimes it is as difficult to know what the past holds as it is to know the future...
The streets in New York City are their own country. A knowledge of them gives one a sense of power. it makes no difference that for the most part New York is a giant grid, supremely traversable compared with such labyrinths as Paris or London. Its power heaves up from the pavement right in front of your eyes, steam escapes in fits and starts as if the whole place were going to blow any minute, people who have already blown apart lie crumpled in its crevasses, and all the while there is a thin promise, a slight wheedling tone, that something important, something drastic, is about to break.
I viewed other people both critically and sympathetically. Why couldn't they just stop complaining so much, just let go and see how good they actually had it? Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen that would allow them to move forward, waiting for some shadowy future moment to be in their lives in earnest. Everybody...was always looking at someone else's life and envying it, wishing to occupy it. I wanted them to stop, to see how much they had already, how they had their health and their strength. I imagine how my life would be if I had half their fortune.
In the right hands, a memoir is the flecks of gold panned out of a great, muddy river. A memoir is those flecks melted down into a shapable liquid that can then be molded and hammered into a single bright band to be worn on a finger, something you could point to and say, "This? Oh, this is my life." Everyone has a muddy river, but very few have the vision, patience, and talent to turn it into something so beautiful. (Ann Patchett in the afterword)
In most ways Lucy had all the ideal elements of a writer: a mastery of language, a poet's touch, a million impassioned ideas, and a strong desire to be heard. (Ann Patchett)
How is it that all of us were caught together in that brief moment of time, me standing there pretending I wasn't hurt by a single thing in this world while they lined up for their turn on the pony...all of them neatly, at my insistence, one in front of the other, like all the days ahead.
Sometimes it is as difficult to know what the past holds as it is to know the future...
The streets in New York City are their own country. A knowledge of them gives one a sense of power. it makes no difference that for the most part New York is a giant grid, supremely traversable compared with such labyrinths as Paris or London. Its power heaves up from the pavement right in front of your eyes, steam escapes in fits and starts as if the whole place were going to blow any minute, people who have already blown apart lie crumpled in its crevasses, and all the while there is a thin promise, a slight wheedling tone, that something important, something drastic, is about to break.
I viewed other people both critically and sympathetically. Why couldn't they just stop complaining so much, just let go and see how good they actually had it? Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen that would allow them to move forward, waiting for some shadowy future moment to be in their lives in earnest. Everybody...was always looking at someone else's life and envying it, wishing to occupy it. I wanted them to stop, to see how much they had already, how they had their health and their strength. I imagine how my life would be if I had half their fortune.
In the right hands, a memoir is the flecks of gold panned out of a great, muddy river. A memoir is those flecks melted down into a shapable liquid that can then be molded and hammered into a single bright band to be worn on a finger, something you could point to and say, "This? Oh, this is my life." Everyone has a muddy river, but very few have the vision, patience, and talent to turn it into something so beautiful. (Ann Patchett in the afterword)
In most ways Lucy had all the ideal elements of a writer: a mastery of language, a poet's touch, a million impassioned ideas, and a strong desire to be heard. (Ann Patchett)
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