So Long, See You Tomorrow Quotes

“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.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“His sadness was of the kind that is patient and without hope.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“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.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Who knows what oversensitive is, considering all there is to be sensitive to.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“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.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice,”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“They looked at me, and were so full of delight in the pleasure they were giving me that some final thread of resistance gave way and I understood not only how entirely generous they were but also that generosity might be the greatest pleasure there is.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Whether they are part of a home or home is a part of them is not a question children are prepared to answer. Having taken away the dog, take away the kitchen–the smell of something good in the oven for dinner. Also the smell of washing day, of wool drying in the wooden rack. Of ashes. Of soup simmering on the stove. Take away the patient old horse waiting by the pasture fence. Take away the chores that kept him busy from the time he got home from school until they sat down to supper. Take away the early-morning mist, the sound of crows quarreling in the treetops.
His work clothes are still hanging on a nail beside the door of his room, but nobody puts them on or takes them off. Nobody sleeps in his bed. Or reads the broken-back copy of Tom Swift and His Flying Machine. Take that away too, while you are at it.
Take away the pitcher and bowl, both of them dry and dusty. Take away the cow barn where the cats, sitting all in a row, wait with their mouths wide open for somebody to squirt milk down their throats. Take away the horse barn too–the smell of hay and dust and horse piss and old sweat-stained leather, and the rain beating down on the plowed field beyond the door. Take all this away and what have you done to him? In the face of a deprivation so great, what is the use of asking him to go on being the boy he was. He might as well start life over again as some other boy instead.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“My father represented authority, which meant—to me—that he could not also represent understanding.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Love, even of the most ardent and soul-destroying kind, is never caught by the lens of the camera.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“A gentleman doesn't have one set of manners for the house of a poor man and another for the house of someone with an income incomparable to his own.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“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.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Without the heavy set aristocratic man snoring away on his side of the bed, without the fresh-eyed child whose hair ribbon needs retying; without the conversation at meals and the hearty appetites and getting dressed for church on time; without the tears of laughter or the worry about making both ends meet, the unpaid bills, the layoffs, both seasonal and unexpected; without the toys that have to picked up lest somebody trip over them, and the seven shirts that have to be washed and ironed, one for every day in the week; without the scraped knee and the hurt feelings, the misunderstandings that need to be cleared up, the voices calling for her so that she is perpetually having to stop what she is doing and go see what they want - without all this, what have you? A mystery: How is it that she didn't realize it was going to last such a short time?”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“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.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“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?”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“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.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“But he was careful. He didn’t make a simple remark without rehearsing it beforehand. And he continually removed the expression from his face lest it be the wrong one, and give him away. He also avoided any strong light, such as the lamp on the kitchen table. Sometimes a weakness overcame him, his legs were unstrung, and he had to find some place to sit down, but this was easy enough to disguise. It was his voice that gave him the most trouble. It sounded false to him and not like his voice at all.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn’t be crossed.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“They had stopped shouting at each other and put their faith in legal counsel. With the result that how things could be made to look was what counted, not how they actually were.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“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.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Ono što mi, ili barem ja, samouvjereno smatramo sjećanjem - znači, trenutak, prizor, činjenicu koja je fiksirana i tako spašena od zaborava - ustvari je oblik pripovijedanja koje se trajno odvija u umu i često s kazivanjem mijenja. Uključeno je previše proturječnih emocionalnih interesa da bi život ikada bio potpuno prihvatljiv, i možda je pripovjedačeva zadaća preurediti stvari tako da se prilagode tom cilju. U svakom slučaju, govoreći o prošlosti, lažemo sa svakim udisajem.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“I don't know what she looked like. Most farm women of her age were reduced by hard work and frequent child-bearing to a common denominator of plainness.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Cletus and his father go out looking for the hired man and find him lying in a ditch a quarter mile from home . . . The next day he is up in time to help with the chores. He is deathly pale and his hands shake. Nobody mentions his absence and he is not apologetic--just withdrawn. As if he had answered a summons and is in no way responsible for what followed.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“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.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“As I looked out of the window at Sheridan Road they looked at me, and were so full of delight in the pleasure they were giving me that some final thread of resistance gave way and I understood not only how entirely generous they were but also that generosity might be the greatest pleasure there is.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“With the help of these and other commonplace objects—with the help also of the two big elm trees that shaded the house from the heat of the sun, and the trumpet vine by the back door, and the white lilac bush by the dining-room window, and the comfortable wicker porch furniture and the porch swing that contributed its creak…creak…to the sounds of the summer night—I got from one day to the next.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“When my father was an old man, he surprised me by remarking that he understood what my mother's death meant to me but had no idea what to do about it. I think it would have been something if he had just said this.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“The house was too new to be comfortable. It was like having to spend a lot of time with a person you didn’t know very well. And”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“inquest,”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow