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Peter Heller Quotes

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Peter Heller is an American author born on February 13, 1959. His works span various literary genres, including novels, non-fiction, and poetry. Heller is known for his distinctive narrative style and profound depiction of the natural environment.

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All Grief Running Waiting Being True Ends Happens Ifs Knowing Knows Life

Famous Peter Heller Quotes

“Missing what most of the time? The babbling faceless agora, the fame, the parties, the pop of flash bulbs? The lovers, the gaiety, the champagne? The solitude carved out of celebrity, poring over charts by a single lamp on a wide desk in a venerable hotel? Room service, coffee before dawn? The company of one friend, two? The choice: All of it or not? Some or none? Now, not now, maybe later?”

Death Fame Amelia Earhart

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Nothing to lose is so empty, so light, that the sand you crumble to at last blows away in a gust, so insubstantial it’s carried upwards to shirr into the sandstorm of the stars. That’s where we all get to. The rest is just wearing thin waiting for the wind.”

Loss Grief Sadness Finality

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Did you ever read the Bible? I mean sit down and read it like it was a book? Check out Lamentations. That's where we're at, pretty much. Pretty much lamenting. Pretty much pouring our hearts out like water.”

Bible Hearts Lamenting Pretty Much

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“There is a pain you can’t think your way out of. You can’t talk it away. If there was someone to talk to. You can walk. One foot the other foot. Breathe in breathe out. Drink from the stream. Piss. Eat the venison strips. And. You can’t metabolize the loss. It is in the cells of your face, your chest, behind the eyes, in the twists of the gut. Muscles, sinew, bone. It is all of you. When you walk you propel it forward. When you let the sled and sit on a fallen log and. You imagine him curling in the one patch of sun maybe lying over your feet. Then it sits with you, the Pain puts its arm over your shoulders. It is your closest friend. Steadfast. And at night you can’t bear to hear your own breath unaccompanied by another and underneath the big stillness like a score is the roaring of the cataract of everything being and being torn away. Then. The Pain is lying beside your side, close. Does not bother you with sound even of breathing.”

Pain Grief Beauty Pets

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“He knew himself: how he loved to hold time in aneyance, or try. He could never, of course, because time, like everything else, flowed through his cupped fingers like water, and he knew he could barely stave off anything that was already in motion.”

Hands Nature Grief Yellowstone

Book:The Last Ranger

Source: The Last Ranger

“She reached across, grabbed my hand. I'm not going anywhere, Hig, she said. Where would I go? Lots of places, I thought but I didn't say anything. To the other side for one. Or way way inside. A lot of places someone else can never follow.”

Loss Grief Trauma Absence Separation Escape Bereavement

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“He is at home with his solitude as the note reverberating inside a bell.”

Solitude

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Happiness was not a word that seemed to apply anymore, when she had lost so many close to her. There was a contentment that felt deeper, that acknowledged and accepted the quieter offerings of small joys—of love and occasional peace in a life that was full of pain.”

Happiness Peace Contentment

Book:Celine

Source: Celine

“We made love again. This time it was me who asked. Lying there again, on the bed, this time with heat, almost an oven heat, coming through the screen, and sweat instead of tears, I wondered how simple we really are. That we can do the same things again and again and again and find them interesting, even fascinating and seek the repetition with a hunger as avid. How fishing was like that, and painting.”

Sex Painter Repetition Fisherman

Book:The Painter

Source: The Painter

“This is what you left, I thought. The vindication of the choice you made to leave that night. Vindication and horror. Sometimes being right isn't all it's cracked up to be: how many times in the last few years I thought about bitter fruit, how when what you are right about is-- well you can't even look at it.”

Being Right

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Still, some nights I grieved. I grieved as much at what I knew must be the fleeting nature of my present happiness as any loss, any past. We lived on some edge, if we ever lived on a rolling plain. Who knew what attack, what illness. That doubleness again. Like flying: the stillness and speed, serenity and danger.”

Flying Dogs Colorado Jasper

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“He's a cocky SOB. He knew the Nick Adams Stories. Probably a frustrated English major who graduated from college qualified to drive a cab.”

Humor College English Major

Book:Celine

Source: Celine

“I once had a book on the stars but now I don't. My memory serves but not stellar, ha. So I made up constellations. I made a Bear and a Goat but maybe not where they are supposed to be, I made some for the animals that once were, the ones I know about.”

Astronomy Flight Lamentations

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Meager as it is. Nothing to lose as I have. Nothing is something somehow.”

Loses Nothing To Lose

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Funny how you can live a whole life waiting and not know it.”

Knows Whole Waiting Whole Life

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“I think now that maybe true sweetness can only happen in limbo. I don't know why. Is it because we are so unsure, so tentative and waiting? Like it needs that much room, that much space to expand. The not knowing anything really, the hoping, the aching transience: This is not real, not really, and so we let it alone, let it unfold lightly. Those times that can fly.”

Thinking Knows Needs Real Happens Waiting Space Rooms Knowing Being True Not Knowing Sweetness Unsure Transience Limbo

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Life and death lived inside each other. That's what occured to me. Death was inside all of us, waiting for warmer nights, a compromised system, a beetle, as in the now dying black timber on the mountains.”

Night Waiting Black Dying Mountain Life And Death Timber Beetles

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“I want to be two people at once. One runs away.”

People Want Two Running Running Away

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Grief is an element. It has its own cycle like the carbon cycle, the nitrogen. It never diminishes not ever. It passes in and out of everything.”

Grief Elements Cycles Carbon Diminish Nitrogen Carbon Cycle

Author:Peter Heller

“Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious.”

Pain Joy Spirit Left Sound Loses Hurt Our Lives Growing Risk Tree Crazy Childhood Dog Cry Wind Calling Okay Paint Curious Climbs Bike Wipe Vigorous Joy And Pain Hedgerows

Author:Peter Heller

“Most of us are never seen, not clearly, and when we are we likely jump and run.”

Running

Book:The Painter: A novel

Source: The Painter: A novel

“Is it possible to love so desperately that life is unbearable? I don't mean unrequited, I mean being in the love. In the midst of it and desperate. Because knowing it will end, because everything does. End.”

Mean Doe Ends Life Is Knowing Desperate Midst Unbearable Unrequited

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“How you refill. Lying there. Something like happiness, just like water, pure and clear pouring in. So good you don’t even welcome it, it runs through you in a bright stream, as if it has been there all along.”

Ifs Has Beens Running Lying Water Clear Pure Welcome Streams Pouring Refills

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“She's a surprise this old earth, one big surprise after another since before she separated from the moon who circles and circles like the mate of a shot goose.”

Bigs Earth Moon Shots Surprise Circles Mates Geese Big Surprises

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“To multiply the years and divide by the desire to live is a kind of false accounting.”

Years Kind Desire Divides Accounting Desire To Live

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Maybe the most real thing the end. To realize when it's too late.”

Real Ends Realizing Late Too Late Real Things

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“Dont pretend to be that small, you are not that great!”

Author:Peter Heller

“If there is nothing else there is this: to be inundated, consumed.”

Ifs Consumed

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“I think now that maybe true sweetness can only happen in limbo.”

Thinking Happens Being True Sweetness Limbo

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“There is no one to tell this to and yet it seems very important to get this right. The reality and what it is like to escape it. That even now it is sometimes too beautiful to bear.”

Life Important Sometimes Reality Seems Beautiful Bears

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

“You rest now. Rest for longer than you are used to resting. Make a stillness around you, a field of peace. Your best work, the best time of your life will grow out of this peace.”

Life Used Grows Fields Stillness Best Work Best Times Time Of Your Life

Book:The Painter: A novel

Source: The Painter: A novel

“It is okay for people you love to leave. For them to come and go. She taught it to me over and over.”

People Love Taught Okay Comes And Goes

Book:The Painter: A novel

Source: The Painter: A novel

“That is what we are, what we do: nose a net, push push, a net that never exists. The knots in the mesh as strong as our own believing. Our own fears.”

Believe Strong Fear Noses Knots Mesh

Book:The Dog Stars

Source: The Dog Stars

About the Author

Born: February 13, 1959
Known for: Author
Quotes: 33

Books & Sources

The Dog StarsRelated source material

The Painter: A novelRelated source material

CelineRelated source material

The Last RangerRelated source material

The PainterRelated source material

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