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William Maxwell

William Maxwell Biography

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“The world (including Drapervilleh is not a nice place, and the innocent and the young have to take their chances. They cannot be watched over, twenty-four hours of the day. At what moment, from what hiding-place, the idea of evil will strike, there is no telling. And when it does, the result is not always disastrous. Children have their own incalculable strength and weakness, and this, for all their seeming helplessness, will determine the pattern of their lives. Even when you suspect why they fall downstairs, you cannot be sure. You have no way of knowing whether their fright is permanent or can be healed by putting butter on the large lump that comes out on their foreheads after a fall.”

ChildrenEvilDangerParenting
Book:Time Will Darken It
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“It seemed like a mistake. And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn't be. Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn't be crossed. I had to find an explanation other than the real one, which was that we were no more immune to misfortune than anybody else, and the idea that kept recurring to me...was that I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn't have gone through and couldn't get back to the place I hadn't meant to leave. Actually, it was other way round: I hadn't gone anywhere and nothing was changed, so far as the roof over our heads was concerned, it was just that she was in the cemetery.”

Grief
Book:So Long, See You Tomorrow
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“There is nothing so difficult to arrive at as the nature and personality of one's parents. Death, about which so much mystery is made,is perhaps no mystery at all. But the history of one's parents has to be pieced together from fragments, their motives and characters guessed at, and the truth about them remains deeply buried, like a boulder that projects one small surface above the level of smooth lawn, and when you come to dig around it, it proves to be too large ever to move, though each year's frost forces it up a little higher.”

Parents
Book:Time Will Darken It
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“It would have been a help if at some time Baptist preacher, resting his forearms on the pulpit and hunching his shoulders, had said People neither get what they deserve nor deserve what they get. The gentle and the trusting are trampled on. The rich man usually forces his way through the eye of the needle, and there is little or no point in putting your faith in Divine Providence. . . . On the other hand, how could any preacher, Baptist or otherwise, say this?”

GodDeserveDivine ProvidenceBaptist
Book:So Long, See You Tomorrow
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“The values and assumptions of that household I took in without knowing when or how it happened, and I have them to this day: The pleasure in sharing pleasure. The belief that is is only proper to help lame dogs to get over stiles and young men to put one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. An impatient disregard for small sums of money. The belief that it is a sin against Nature to put sugar in one's tea. The preference for being home over being anywhere else. The belief that generous impulses should be acted on, whether you can afford to do this or not. The trust in premonitions and the knowledge of what is in wrapped packages. The willingness to go to any amount of trouble to make yourself comfortable. The tendency to take refuge in absolutes. The belief that you don't have to apologize for tears; that consoling words should never be withheld; that what somebody wants very much they should, if possible, have.”

Family HistoryAssumptions
Book:ANCESTORS: A Family History
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“At that period, rising in the world meant giving up working with your hands in favor of work in a store or an office. The people who lived in town had made it, and turned their backs socially on those who had not but were still growing corn and wheat out there in the country. What seemed like an impassable gulf was only the prejudice of a single generation, which refused to remember its own not very remote past.”

Family RelationshipsCornWheat
Book:ANCESTORS: A Family History
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“Because I actively enjoy sleeping, dreams, the unexplainable dialogues that take place in my head as I am drifting off, all that, I tell myself that lying down to an afternoon nap that goes on and on through eternity is not something to be concerned about. What spoils this pleasant fancy is the recollection that when people are dead they don't read books. This I find unbearable.”

PeopleBookDreamLyingEnjoySleepGoes OnConcernedEternityDialoguePleasantFancyAfternoonUnbearableSpoilRecollectionNapsDriftingLying DownUnexplainableDrifting OffAfternoon Naps
Book:Later novels and stories: The château, So long, see you tomorrow, stories and improvisations, 1957-1999
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“What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.”

MindHas BeensEndsMomentsFactsPastFormLyingInterestMemoriesTalkingCasesEmotionalGoes OnInvolvedSceneDrawsBreathsRateStorytellingAcceptableConformStorytellerOblivion
Book:So Long, See You Tomorrow
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“The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters”

WantMindMatterPastTurnsViewsGenerationsCuriosityDetailsLandscapeLackingSeventiesBreathtakingOlder Generation
Book:All the Days and Nights: The Collected Stories
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“Sometimes she goes out to work as a practical nurse, and comes home and sits by the kitchen table soaking her feet in a pan of hot water and Epsom salts. When she gets into bed and the springs creak under her weight, she groans with the pleasure of lying stretched out on an object that understands her so well.”

WellsSometimesHomeLyingWaterPleasureFeetObjectsBedSpringWeightHotTablesPracticalsKitchenComing HomeNurseSaltHot WaterSoakingKitchen Table
Book:Later novels and stories: The château, So long, see you tomorrow, stories and improvisations, 1957-1999
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