Quotessence
Home / Authors / Sue Miller Books
Sue Miller

Sue Miller Books

Film writer

Related Quotes

“I was recalling that other world in which it had thrilled me, in a way, the surprise of thinking that I could be a person who would betray Daniel. Now I wondered if Daniel could surprise himself, could surprise me, by being such a person too. Would he let himself do such a thing? I didn’t think so. And then I wondered: Is it by will, then, that we are who we are? Do we decide, do we make ourselves, after a certain point in life? I tried to call up the moment when I had decided I could be such a person. It seemed to me I hadn’t quite got there, not really. That I was still just playing with the idea of it when the ground shifted under me. But perhaps to play with such an idea was already to be a certain kind of person.”

FateWillFidelity
Book:While I Was Gone
Create image

“I suppose in our contemporary lives, our cumulative e-mails might constitute a kind of diary: that informal, moment-by-moment description of life as it goes by. . As I think of those notes now - what I wrote, what I said - it seems to me they danced across the surface just as my grandmother's diaries did - Anais Nin she wasn't, and I wasn't, either. Who is? Not even Anais Nin.”

ThinkingKindSaidMomentsSeemsMightNotesSurfaceContemporaryDescriptionGrandmotherMailMy GrandmotherDiariesCumulativeContemporary Life
Author:Sue Miller
Create image

“But pain may be a gift to us. Remember, after all, that pain is one of the ways we register in memory the things that vanish, that are taken away. We fix them in our minds forever by yearning, by pain, by crying out. Pain, the pain that seems unbearable at the time, is memory's first imprinting step, the cornerstone of the temple we erect inside us in memory of the dead. Pain is part of memory, and memory is a God-given gift.”

WayMindFirstsMaySeemsPainRememberGivenMemoriesStepsForeverTakenCryTemplesYearningUnbearableRegisterCornerstonesImprinting
Author:Sue Miller
Create image

“And I was remembering that time in our lives together, the time of those ritual walks. I was remembering the way it feels at just that moment when you begin to turn, when you’re poised exactly between the things in life you want to do and those you need to do, and it seems for a few blessed seconds that they are all going to be the same.”

WayWantNeedsFeelsMomentsSeemsTogetherRememberTurnsWalksOur LivesBlessedThat MomentRitualSecondsThings In LifeLife Together
Author:Sue Miller
Create image

“And what if we’d been utterly open? Made jokes about the first wife? What if we’d been that kind of family? Well, I would have been different, surely. But not because I knew the secret. For it wasn’t the secret—the secret that wasn’t a secret anyway—that led to the austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies.”

IfsFirstsWellsKindHas BeensMadeDifferentLyingSecretSilenceOur LivesWifeJokesWhat IfAusterity
Author:Sue Miller
Create image

“But perhaps this is all to the good. Perhaps it’s best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself, to put at risk everything that’s dear to you. Who reminds you of the distances we have to bridge to begin to know anything about one another. Who reminds you that what seems to be—even about yourself—may not be. That like him, you need to be forgiven.”

KnowsNeedsMayPersonsSeemsRiskPossibilityCapacityDistanceSurpriseDearCornersBridgesAbout YourselfForgiven
Author:Sue Miller
Create image