Kevin Brockmeier Quotes

Quotes about:

• There are times in your life when, despite the steel weight of your memories and the sadness that seems to lie at your feet like a shadow, you suddenly and strangely feel perfectly okay.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Memories, Lying, Sadness

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.111, Vintage

  46 Copy quote

• Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward--that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Thinking, Way Forward, One Day

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.123, Vintage

  37 Copy quote

• Anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much or too little. You can have love that parches, love that defeats. You can have love measured out in the wrong proportions. It's like your sunlight and water - the wrong kind of love is just as likely to stifle hope as it is to nourish it.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Love Is, Water, Littles

  Kevin Brockmeier (2011). “The Brief History of the Dead”, p.67, Hachette UK

  17 Copy quote

• I might not remember how the sky looked on any given day. I do remember, though, what it was like to be a boy beneath a sky.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Boys, Sky, Might

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Worry is a mean-faced dwarf who beats on your heart like a kettledrum.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Heart, Mean, Dwarves

  6 Copy quote

• I write out of gratitude for all the books I have loved over the years.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Gratitude, Book, Writing

  7 Copy quote

• You have a pet theory, one you have been turning over for years, that life itself is a kind of Rube Goldberg device, an extremely complicated machine designed to carry out the extremely simple task of constructing your soul.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Simple, Years, Soul

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.103, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• I suppose that when you're growing up, you're bound to reach an age when you feel buffeted by all the changes in your life, when either your mind begins outpacing your body or your body begins outpacing your mind and you're not quite in conversation with yourself anymore.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Growing Up, Mind, Age

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The living carry us inside them like pearls. We survive only so long as they remember us.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Long, Pearls, Remember

  Kevin Brockmeier (2006). “The Brief History of the Dead: A Novel”, p.5, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• People who read Anne Lamott, like people who read Anne Rice, believe that tragedy is romantic, but the people who read Anne Lamott believe it ironically.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Believe, People, Tragedy

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.26, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• The books you love best - those are the immensity of the sea.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Book, Love Is, Sea

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• If your reading life and your friendships overlap, that's just a nice coincidence - a case where the conversation you're having with books and the conversation you're having with actual human beings happen to dovetail.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Nice, Book, Reading

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I always try to stay as quiet as possible about a book until it's finished.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Book, Trying, Quiet

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• She had the same responsibility as everybody else did: to live as softly as she could in the world.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Responsibility, World

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.17, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Alive, World, Mystery

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.78, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• I'm uncommonly slow to show my work to other people, and by the time I do I've usually exhausted myself so completely that all I really want is for someone to tell me that my efforts have added up to something - not one of my better qualities, I admit.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  People, Effort, Quality

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• ...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Wind, Fire, Long

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.84, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• It's like you're born with all these blessings, only you don't realize they're blessings until you lose them. And if you're thick-headed enough, like me, you don't even realize you've lost them, not until they come back to you.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Blessing, Realizing, Like You

  4 Copy quote

• Dreaming was easier than screaming, and screaming was easier than worrying, and worrying was easier than crying, which was what she knew she would be reduced to if she didn’t keep a hard eye on herself.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Life, Dream, Eye

  Kevin Brockmeier (2011). “The Brief History of the Dead”, p.22, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• I had always been the kind of boy who was quick to laugh and quick to cry.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Boys, Laughing, Kind

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Virginia, Vices, Forget

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.101, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• A successful song comes to sing itself inside the listener. It is cellular and seismic, a wave coalescing in the mind and in the flesh. There is a message outside and a message inside, and those messages are the same, like the pat and thud of two heartbeats, one within you, one surrounding. The message of the lullaby is that it’s okay to dim the eyes for a time, to lose sight of yourself as you sleep and as you grow: if you drift, it says, you’ll drift ashore: if you fall, you will fall into place.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Song, Fall, Eye

  5 Copy quote

• With every sentence she writes, Davis freshens the senses. Her novels achieve a tone that’s unlike anyone else’s, creating an atmosphere you don’t so much interpret as breathe.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Writing, Creating, Atmosphere

  6 Copy quote

• You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Stars, Pain, Joy

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.101, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• Sometimes they rose up inside her, these moments of fierce happiness, kindling out of their own substance like a spark igniting a mound of grass. It was a joy to be alive, a strange and savage joy, and she stood there in the warmth and destruction of it knowing it could not last.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Knowing, Rose, Joy

  Kevin Brockmeier (2011). “The Illumination”, p.37, Random House

  4 Copy quote

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