“He was perfect, was how she'd put it to herself. And then that clear-eyed, calm-faced boy would shine forth from Red's sags and wrinkles, from his crumpled eyelids and hollowed cheeks and the two deep crevices bracketing his mouth and just his general obtuseness, his stubbornness, his infuriating belief that simple cold logic could solve all life's problems, and she would feel unspeakably lucky to have ended up with him.” LoveRomantic Author:Anne Tyler
“...sometimes I stand there watching them and I see they believe they're completely special, the first, the only people ever to feel the way they're feeling. They believe they'll live happily ever after, that all the other marriages going on around them - those ordinary, worn-down, flattened-in arrangements - why, those are nothing like they'll have. They'll never setlle for so little. And it makes me mad. I can't help it, Cody. I know it's selfish, but I can't help it. I want to ask them, Who do you think you are, anyhow? Do you imagine you're unique? Do you really suppose I was always this old difficult woman? Cody, listen. I was special too, once, to someone. I could just reach out and lay a fingertip on his arm while he was talking and he would instantly fall silent and get all confused. I had hopes; I was courted; I had the most beautiful wedding. I had three lovely pregnancies, where every morning I woke up knowing something perfect would happen in nine months, eights months, seven months...so it seemed I was full of light; it was light and plans that filled me. And then while you children were little, why, I was the center of your worlds! I was everything to you! It was Mother this and Mother that, and 'Where's Mother? Where's she gone to?' and the moment you came in from school, 'Mother? Are you home?' It's not fair, Cody. It's really not fair; now I'm old and I walk along unnoticed, just like anyone else. It strikes me as unjust, Cody.” LoveEnvyOld AgeCouples Book:Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Source: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
“He was sitting on the edge of the bed last night in his pajamas she said. And I saw the back of his neck, this fragile slender stem of a neck and it struck me all at once that there was nobody anywhere any place on this planet who would look at that little neck and just have to reach out and cup a hand behind it. you know how you just have to touch your child sometimes? How you drink him in with your eyes and you could stare at him for hours and you marvel at how dear and impossible perfect he is? And that will never again happen to Douglas. He has nobody left on earth who thinks he's special [...] I need this. I have to do this! I cannot see that little stem of a neck and let him go on alone in this world. I can't! I'd rather die!” LoveMotherSonPrideMotherhoodParentsAdoption Book:A Spool of Blue Thread Source: A Spool of Blue Thread
“He honestly believed, for an instant, that what he'd heard was music-a tune piped, a burble of notes, a little scrap of melody floating by on wind and breaking his heart.” LoveFeelingsHurtFeeling Of Weakness Author:Anne Tyler
“People imagine that missing a loved one works kind of like missing cigarettes,' he said. 'The first day is really hard but the next day is less hard and so forth, easier and easier the longer you go on. But instead it's like missing water. Every day, you notice the person's absence more.” PeopleLoveFirstsKindPersonsSaidHardNextWaterImagineMissingGoes OnEasierAbsenceLoved OnesImagine ThatCigaretteNext Day Book:Back When We Were Grownups Source: Back When We Were Grownups
