Quotessence
Home / Authors / Garth Greenwell Books

Garth Greenwell Books

Author

Small Rain

A source page for quotes linked to Garth Greenwell.

0 quotes

Cleanness

A source page for quotes linked to Garth Greenwell.

0 quotes

Related Quotes

“They embraced for a long time, a kind of physical contact seldom seen in public, maybe seen only between parents and their very young children, an intimacy confident of absolute possession... [h]ow quickly those embraces would pass. They would take on different meanings as the child grew older, they would become impermissible; the same touch that here warmed our hearts would just in a few years elicit our disapproval, our concern, finally our scorn. And so it is, I thought then, as the man and child released each other and moved away from the water, so it is that at the very moment we come into full consciousness of ourselves what we experience is leave-taking and a loss we seek the rest of our lives to restore.”

LossIntimacy
Book:What Belongs to You
Create image

“I guess I think that sex and desire and humiliation are central to my experience of consciousness - to my experience of humanness - and I wanted to explore the ways that they circle around and approach and fail to add up to love, or the ways that those three terms - sex, desire, love - can in some lights seem synonymous and in others like elements entirely alien to one another.”

ThinkingWayLightSeemsWantedDesireThreeSexTermConsciousnessFailingElementsApproachAddCirclesAliensHumiliationHumannessDesire Love
Author:Garth Greenwell
Create image

“I hope that the relationship of the title to the novel [ What Belongs To You] gets more complex with each section of the book: that maybe it begins by resonating with the question of prostitution - to what extent can a body be commodified, what exactly are you renting or purchasing when you pay for sex - and deepens over the course of the book to address larger questions of ownership and belonging.”

BookBodyCoursesSexPayNovelComplexesTitlesAddressesBelongingOwnershipSectionsProstitutionPurchasingResonating
Author:Garth Greenwell
Create image

“The fact remains that books that really put gay people in the center, and especially books that do so in a way that is sexually explicit, tend not to get a great deal of mainstream attention: they don't tend to sell well, and they don't tend to win major awards. This makes the occasional exception, like Alan Hollinghurst, all the more remarkable.”

PeopleWayWellsBookFactsWinningDealsAttentionGayMajorsRemainsSellsRemarkableExceptionAwardsMainstreamOccasionalSexuallyGay PeopleExplicit
Author:Garth Greenwell
Create image

“If my novel gets any attention in Bulgaria, it will be as a scandal: a book about a teacher at a famous school and his relationship with a prostitute. I doubt very much it will be evaluated on its merits as literature. If Bulgarian were the book's only language, that would be painful and limiting to me as a writer. Since my book also exists in English - where it isn't scandalous at all - I feel comfortable with the possibility of scandal.”

IfsFeelsBookWould BeSchoolLiteratureLanguageAttentionNovelDoubtTeacherPossibilityComfortablePainfulMeritScandalScandalousBulgariaBulgarians
Author:Garth Greenwell
Create image

“I guess I've done a lot of different kinds of performing at various times - opera singing, poetry reading, not least high school teaching - and I do enjoy it, at least sometimes. But I find it incredibly anxiety-producing and exhausting. Privacy is more congenial, and I go a little crazy if I can't spend a big chunk of every day, or almost every day, alone. Certainly I have to be alone to write.”

IfsWritingKindLittlesI CanDifferentSometimesDoneBigsSchoolReadingEnjoyCrazyTeachingAnxietySingingHigh SchoolVariousPerformingPrivacyOperaDifferent KindsExhaustingChunksPoetry ReadingOpera Singing
Author:Garth Greenwell
Create image

“I think history is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your life along in a kind of frictionless way. History is never invisible, finally, though some people seem to work very hard to be willfully blind. That's too harsh, or too self-righteous: none of us sees history fully; none of us is adequately aware of how the arrangements of the present moment foreclose the possibilities of others to fully live their only lives.”

PeopleThinkingKindMomentsDesirePossibilityAmbitionBlindInvisiblePresent MomentHarshSense Of Self
Author:Garth Greenwell
Create image