A Quote by Mavis Gallant
I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.
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My father had a very simple view of life: you don’t get anything for nothing. Everything has to be earned, through work, persistence and honesty. My father also had a deep charm, the gift of winning our trust. He was the kind of man with whom many people dream of spending an evening.
My father had always dreamed of getting a Ph.D., but certain life circumstances prevented him from following through. It was a tremendous, deep regret. The day I got my Ph.D., I saw in my father's face what it meant that I had done this.
I was very fortunate in my gene mix. The gambling instincts I inherited from my father were matched by my mother's gift for analysis.
A best friend is someone with whom you can sit on the porch, without a word, and then walk away with the feeling that it was the best conversation that ever had in your life. I would like to see next to me was the man in whose presence my heart beat would be evenly and uniformly, the man next to whom I would be calm, because I was not afraid to be the next day to lose him. And the time would have flowed more slowly, and we could just keep quiet, knowing that to talk with us there is still a whole life. Only one thing makes a dream impossible - it is the fear of failure.
and another claimed it was inherited through a parent who was a carrier of the defective gene. I had always assumed the latter was the case with Claire. After all, surely a child who grew out of grief would be born with a heavy heart.
William Carlos Williams, late in his long life, had a dream: He saw an enormous spiral staircase in empty space, and his father slowly descending toward him. When he reached the bottom, his father walked over, looked him in the eye and said: “You know those poems you're writing? They're no good.”
My father's father wrote for a Philadelphia newspaper and aspired to be a playwright. We had in our house a couple of crazy unproduced plays that he had written. For the one creative writing class I took in my life, I didn't do any writing - I decided that I would plagiarize his terrible play to not fail the class.
My father is a psychologist who wouldn't let fear stop us. Particularly with me, he was hell bent on requiring us and teaching us to walk through fear. I don't know if I would've become someone who taps into their ability to push through those tough situations without him.
I wasn't afraid of him anymore, because I could smell his fear. You never had to be afraid of anything that was afraid of you.
The last thing I wanted in life was to be measured by what I had inherited, as opposed to what I had done.
I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.
Her first reaction was one of hope, because his eyes were open and shining with a radiant light she had never seen there before. She prayed to God to give him at least a moment so that he would not go without knowing how much she had love him despite all their doubts, and she felt an irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had done badly in the past. But she had to give in to the intransigence of death. (Love in the Time of Cholera)
Every time the phone rang, my heart jumped. Was it Alexander? And when it wasn't him my heart would break into a million pieces. It had been two longs days since I had seen my Gothic mate. I was so preoccupied with Alexander, dreaming of the next time we'd be together, nothing else mattered. I didn't wash the spot where his tender love lips had pressed against my flesh. I was acting like I was straight out of a Gidget movie! What had happened to me? I was losing my edge! For the first time in my life I was really afraid. Afraid of never seeing him again and afraid of being rejected.
I know it was a gift from God. My father was a preacher and my mother worked in churches all her life. My father had a very deep bass sounding voice and my mother had an in-between soprano voice. Not great singers, but they had great tones to their voices. I think that had a lot to do with it. Also, I really believe my voice was a gift from God. I believe if you take care of it, He will help you take care of it.
It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.
My father earned every penny he had, and I would have loved to have bought him a Rolls-Royce because his whole life was cars. Sadly, he didn't live to see the day when I could have done that for him, which still hurts.
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