Top 7 Quotes & Sayings by Brad Barkley

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American novelist Brad Barkley.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Brad Barkley

Brad Barkley, a native of North Carolina, is the author of the novel, Money, Love (Norton), a Barnes and Noble "Discover Great New Writers" selection and a "BookSense 76" choice. Money, Love was named one of the best books of 2000 by the Washington Post and the Library Journal. Brad was named one of the “Breakthrough Writers You Need To Know” by Book Magazine. His novel Alison's Automotive Repair Manual was also a "BookSense 76" selection. He has published two collections of short stories, Circle View and Another Perfect Catastrophe . His short fiction has appeared in nearly thirty magazines, including Southern Review, Georgia Review, the Oxford American, Glimmer Train, Book Magazine, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, which twice awarded him the Emily Balch Prize for Best Fiction. His work has been anthologized in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2002. His first YA novel, Scrambled Eggs At Midnight, co-authored with Heather Hepler, was published in May 2006 by Penguin, and was a summer 2006 “Booksense 76” choice. His second YA novel, Dream Factory, published in spring 2007, was also “BookSense 76” selection, a Library Guild “Book of the Month, pick” and was voted the Texas Institute of Arts and Letters “Best Young Adult Book” for 2007. Their most recent title, Jars of Glass, was recently published by Dutton-Penguin He has received four Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the author of the novels Money, Love (Norton) and Alison's Automotive Repair Manual, as well as two short-story collections and three Young Adult novels. His short fiction has appeared in such magazines as Glimmer Train, the Southern Review, and The Oxford American.

Any more questions?" I ask, poking him gently in the ribs. "Do you still love me any?" Eliot asks, putting his hand over mine. "A little." "A little?" he asks, pulling away from me. "A lot." "How much?" he asks. "More than chocolate chip cookies." "Mmm" he says, kissing my shoulder. "More than walking on the beach." Eliot kisses me on the neck. "More than . . ." I pause, turning to look at him. "More than?" he asks, kissing my lips. I turn toward him. "Anything.
I want to show you something,” I say. What?” He dabs at his lips with the napkin, and for a moment I’m wishing so hard that I am that napkin that I can almost feel myself changing, becoming thin and papery and white. “Cal?” I sit back and feel myself blushing, feel it from the tips of my toes all the way to the heat at the backs of my ears.
I pu my finger to her lips. "You have to hush a minute so that I can tell you something." "What?" she says, bites my finger. I look at her. "I love you." She gets quiet, the kind of quiet that sinks into her, softens her. "Well that works out," she finally says, her voice deeper and breathless, her eyes moist, "because I love you too." She turns, leans against my arm, and settles into me.
But how he acts, and what he says, and what he does, and who he is, they don't line up anymore, and the lie is in that not lining up, the lie is in not being what she needs but pretending that he is. No one says a word, and she sees it every minute they have together.
You asked me if I believed in magic, and I said yes, and that's how. You just step out, start pulling your life out of the air. You make friends, you find work you really like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then lave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up.
Cal," I whisper into her sleep, "if you go, you know what? You'll break my liver." I want to pretend that it's a joke, that she will wake up and laugh with me, throwing her head back the way she did last night, bit this time the words are true . . . she will break my liver, break my heart, kill everything inside alive inside me.
All of it seems like noise and false light, and all I want for tonight is quiet, the black and gray of a summer night, and a girl in a pink dress, beside me forever. — © Brad Barkley
All of it seems like noise and false light, and all I want for tonight is quiet, the black and gray of a summer night, and a girl in a pink dress, beside me forever.
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