Gaige Quotes

Be happy. Decide to be happy. If you want to be happy, be happy! No one cares if you're happy or not, so why wait for permission? And did it really matter if you had been deeply unhappy in your past? Who but you remembered that?

That real mother, the mother that you get, you've got to love her, there's no choice. She is the mother you needed. She gave you strength, either because she loved you well or because she loved you poorly. She gave you your mission. It's the dream mother that you have to let go of. The one you pined for, the one you thought your decency promised you. She's the one you've got to bury. She's a mirage. She'll only break your heart.

The world and its people are too much for me. I am crushed between empathy and impotence. I don't think I'm important. Not at all! In fact, I am embarrassingly insubstantial. Then why was I given this heart? It is so much more than I need.

A reader is never lonely.

Every human being imagines, but few disclose. Children are quick to share their strangest thoughts and inventions. They cease to do so only after the shaming or baffled reactions of adults, portraits of which the child hangs on her inner walls, until at last, she closes the gallery.

Here’s an idea: All emotions start out as love. Later, that love is worked on by the forces of luck and suffering. Hate is just soured love. Fear is wounded love. Longing is homeless love. Love, not pain, is the mother. Love is the taproot. I have no regrets. I do not regret anything.

Because love is tidal; it goes out, it comes in, it goes out.

Everyone is hard to love, if you do it for long enough.

Your love dug me a kind of trench, a groove in the universe where I still go to mourn.

No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician. But for a while, in your arms, the universe was the right size, and I knew where I was.

Gotham. Full of hustlers. Bright as a galaxy. My home.

It’s the dream mother that you have to let go of. The one you pined for, the one you thought your decency promised you. She’s the one you’ve got to bury. She’s a mirage. She’ll only break your heart.

A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind; it has left in its wake a strange lucidity. How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. —Louise Glück, “October

That real mother, the mother that you get, you’ve got to love her, there’s no choice. She is the mother you needed. She gave you strength, either because she loved you well or because she loved you poorly. She gave you your mission.

I ran with a wail stuck in my throat. It was ridiculous, it was all ridiculous. Not just him, not just this - all of it - life - to be afflicted with the endless urge to survive. It turns out, there's almost nothing you can do to stop trying.

But the nonbeliever is in a bind, because without God, who forgives? Human beings are pretty unforgiving. The law certainly isn’t forgiving. Forgiveness needs a messenger. Some folks say, “Forgive yourself.” But who the hell can do that? It’s a goddamned conflict of interest.

Every marriage needs one skeptic to keep it safe. But a marriage of two skeptics will fail to thrive.

I’m not “depressed,” she said. Besides, I hate that word. OK, what should we call it? She fluffed the pillow behind her back, indignant. I’m very faithful to my problems.

Complaining is a form of taking.

I wanted to tell all my people, my Bronx people, “You gotta come see this! These woods are ours too. These woods are everybody’s.

But the nonbeliever is in a bind, because without God, who forgives? Human beings are pretty unforgiving. The law certainly isn’t forgiving. Forgiveness needs a messenger.

Truck is huge. It has those spotlights on top? This truck is an if-you-think-my-truck-is-big-you-should-see-my-gun-collection kind of truck.

You go to the trail for the mountaintops. You go to get away from people. But it’s funny. The people end up being what you remember the most.

They don’t want fat people to hike, but they also don’t want poor people to hike.

PAINsylvania. The state motto should be “Why, God, why?

Here’s what I want to say to the other side, to the Righteous Left, to the Easily Injured and Offended: You say you want concessions/changes/social justice, but let’s admit it, you are never going to quit.

That real mother, the mother that you get, you’ve got to love her, there’s no choice. She is the mother you needed. She gave you strength, either because she loved you well or because she loved you poorly. She gave you your mission. It’s the dream mother that you have to let go of. The one you pined for, the one you thought your decency promised you. She’s the one you’ve got to bury. She’s a mirage. She’ll only break your heart.

It’s been a while since I’ve made it to church, but in my heart, I’m still faithful. Because of this, I do not believe in such things as “unforgivable mistakes.” God knows you are a broken sinner and loves you anyway.

A fire is a bedtime story. It starts fierce, in high flame, but it’s in the dying down that the fire is most itself, when the heat from the embers enters you and hushes all your intentions, both your goodness and your graft.

woods. The world and its people are too much for me. I am crushed between empathy and impotence. I don’t think I’m important. Not at all! In fact, I am embarrassingly insubstantial. Then why was I given this heart? It is so much more than I need.

I’ve heard it said that the sorrow of human life is that it ends. But I don’t think that’s the source of our sorrow. Everything ends, not just human lives. Days end. Species disappear. Planets die. No, the real sorrow of human life is that we feel. That’s our affliction.

understood the masochistic level of exposure a mother takes on the moment her child is born, how agonizing her position. Your response to life’s chaos was to over-function. You were a taskmaster, a list maker, a toer-of-the-line. Like mothers the world over, you labored simultaneously on multiple fronts, clocking in at work while still managing a family. (Sick child/flat tire/dirty grout/empty fridge.) Thank you for being conflicted. Thank you for how godawful you looked certain mornings. For your occasional deranged soliloquies of resentment. Honestly, they made me love you more. Thank you also for playing make

For some reason, I think of Naukeag Lake. Movie night at Naukeag Lake with Ma before it became members-only. We used to sit there on a blanket on the hard sand watching some Gene Wilder vehicle with the other locals. I was maybe six or seven, my sisters not yet on the scene. We both loved that stupid lake. It had terrible circulation and was riddled with nuisance algae even back in the ’70s. Dragonflies buzzed around the duckweed, laying their eggs, their bodies brighter green than beetles, brighter green than June itself. I remember Ma’s delighted face in the projector light. Happiness—rare as it is, fragile as it is, its sightings achieve a kind of private fame. Look, here I am, still talking about it.

We’re just a hyphen between our parents and our kids. That’s what you learn in middle age. Mostly this is something a mature person can live with. But every once in a while you just want to send up a flare. I too am here! Everybody is sympathetic until you try and make your minuscule life interesting and then they’re like, What’s wrong with you? You think you’re special?

Dear Mother, You used to call me Sparrow. Why Sparrow? Well, because the woods are full of sparrows, and you loved everything outdoors. Songbirds, wildflowers, wind. You could read the weather like a poem. But why did I remind you of a sparrow and not another songbird? I never thought to ask. With their white cheeks and dingy underparts, plain brown sparrows are everywhere. They beg at outdoor tables and hop under city benches. They nest in chimneys and rafters and even tailpipes. Sparrows are not much to look at, but they’re smart. Canny. Tiny, feathered battle-axes. Sparrows are survivors. I like to think that’s what you meant… No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician. But for a while, in your arms, the universe was the right size, and I knew where I was…Mothers have a sixth sense. Their love is occult.

Some lost people don’t have the skills but instead they have something else. I don’t know what to call it. Heart. They survive because of their love of life or of the dear ones in their mind. They stay present. They keep their eyes open. Often, when these people are rescued, they report feeling a sense of wonder out there. For the moments they had left. For the privilege of being alive at all.” A breeze crosses the crowd. Leaves whiffle. It is quiet. “And that’s who you’re looking for,” I say. “That’s Sparrow.

Suddenly, he wanted some credit for it. He wanted someone to thank him for not crapping on the institution of love. He wanted someone to thank him for not being yet another dilettante. He wanted someone to thank him for quitting poetry. He wanted some great poet to thank him for quitting poetry instead of desecrating it with his amateurishness. He wanted some unborn child to thank him for not conceiving her and not leaving her a hope chest full of mawkish villanelles. He wanted some sort of organization of martyrs to give him an award. He wanted to be decorated for not putting up a fuss. He wanted to be the president of forgettable people. He wanted there to be a competition for the least competitive person, and he wanted to win that competition. He wanted some sort of badge or outfit or medal or key or hat. He wanted to be asked to stand. He wanted to be considered. He wanted to be considered in earnest before being ignored. He wanted all the insane and beautiful and passionate people in the world to take one moment of silence in gratitude for the ones who had ceded them the stage-- he, the unread poet, the sacrifice, the schoolteacher-- he wanted one goddamned moment of appreciation.

Until I sailed, I never would have known that children could be so brave. Which is not to say they did not whine at sea, that they did not cry at the worst times, or need their crusts cut just so, but as it turned out, they had a deep capacity for witness. In a way that I could not, they became the sea, they became the swamp. Their experience was total, without footnote. That day in the swamp, I felt unaccountably happy for them, and for myself as a child, because I knew that I must have been that way once too. I remembered the loss of childhood too well. But I often forgot the long years it was mine.

Does it bother you that I never wanted children of my own? Maybe in private moments you think it speaks poorly of you or of your mothering. But the opposite is true. My choice reflects my awe of mothers. After all, as an anxious child, I understood the masochistic level of exposure a mother takes on the moment her child is born, how agonizing her position. Your response to life’s chaos was to over-function. You were a taskmaster, a list maker, a toer-of-the-line. Like mothers the world over, you labored simultaneously on multiple fronts, clocking in at work while still managing a family. (Sick child/flat tire/dirty grout/empty fridge.) Thank you for being conflicted. Thank you for how godawful you looked certain mornings. For your occasional deranged soliloquies of resentment. Honestly, they made me love you more.

Sea Wife, by Amity Gaige.

If you want to be happy, be happy! No one cares if you’re happy or not, so why wait for permission?

She said you’ll be gentle when you deflower me.” Gaige throws his head back and laughs, drawing the attention of every single person on the patio.

Sometimes life just writes you tiny, awful poems.

This is it. This is what a life is. A journey with no signposts. The seas roll out in every direction. There but for the grace of God.

I’ve lived my whole life with a land mind. Thinking land thoughts. But I want to think sea thoughts. I want to have a sea mind.

We come from nothing & return to nothing, but in between we're supposed to lead lives of grace and courage?

I could never give it a name, my condition. I would have said, "I'm depressed," if that had felt sufficient. But I felt more than depressed. I felt that I was depression. A swallowed woman.

Look at the care we take w/ our secrets, when we're so sloppy w/ everything else.

He leaned down & he said, Michael, I will tell you honestly because you’ve been honest with me, that what you want is a holy human right, and you shouldn’t just give it up. I humored him. I said, What right, Harry? The right to feel the burden of carrying your own life. Just you and your family and your boat. No crutches, no excuses.

We say we want kids to be joyful/unmaterialistic/resilient. That’s what sailing kids are like. They climb masts & can correctly identify obscure plant life. They don’t care what somebody looks like when they meet them, they sometimes don’t even speak the same language, but they work it out. They don’t sit around ranking one kind of life against another.

After Georgie, something had changed in our marriage, and there was nowhere solid to put the blame. We were almost forty, and simultaneously our marriage had - I don' know - thickened, agglutinated, become oatmeal-like. Differences between us that had once provided sparks now seemed inefficient. Was there love? Yes, yes - but at the margins. At the center, there was administration.

Where does a mistake begin?” his wife asks at the start of the book. “Did my mistake begin with the boat? Or my marriage itself?

Michael and I both recognized we had problems, we just couldn’t agree on the solution. I think what was happening was, I wasn’t just talking about the implausible plan to walk away from our house and the kids’ schools and Michael’s job, no matter how assured we would be of getting these things back. I was wondering, whether we were to go or to stay, what would we do— about us?

You think this will solve all our problems. It’s magical thinking, Michael. It’s the way a child thinks.

Do you ever wonder where school buses go to die? I’ll tell you! They go to Central America, where they are tricked out, painted & forced to climb mountain roads picking up anyone w/ their thumb out. When I boarded the chicken bus in Sabanitas this p.m., it was already full. No one batted an eye as I snuggled in w/ 5 sacks of groceries. I could feel the exact shape & cup size of the breasts of the woman standing behind me, but she didn’t seem to mind. Then her breasts were replaced by the hard belly of a gentleman who’d given up his seat. Had to struggle not to fall forward into the man in front of me, who stood holding onto nothing like Jesus as we tore through the one-lane roads back down the other side of the mountain.

Fair, what a useless word. A concept that is relevant only in the rare moments when there is no greater danger than unfairness.

We argue, but we never change each other’s minds. We only get farther apart.

I live in fear of making an honest mistake in conversation followed by some kind of Maoist-style recrimination session.

to smile.

It’s tiring to carry the weight of eternally unsaid words.

Fatigue overtakes me, and a grief so concentrated I swim in it. A grief that makes my arms heavy. A grief that makes my back slump. A grief that makes me close my eyes. I want to sleep like the unborn and the dead. I want to sleep so deeply that I see him again. I want to confront him. Who were you? I want to say. Why do you talk to me now? I want to shake his inert body. But what’s the use? Our losses will never be done with us. They have endless patience.

How strange to shout the words “I’m here” and be left with no confirmation.

You make your way. You handle it. You don’t wait around for a savior. You don’t allow yourself to be a victim. And when all else fails, you make a joke.

She cannot bear the suggestion that her mind is unsafe, a wild place where she wanders, a subject.

Dreams burn a wildfire in a body. It’s worth it, but there’s no coda.

question was, When would my heart be whole again?

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Mystery is fine in heaven and in poetry, but on earth, mystery signals human failure. Someone has failed to understand, to master the unknown.

you’ve got to love her, there’s no choice. She is the mother you needed. She gave you strength, either because she loved you well or because she loved you poorly. She gave you your mission. It’s the dream mother that you have to let go of. The one you pined for, the one you thought your decency promised you. She’s the one you’ve got to bury. She’s a mirage. She’ll only break your heart.

That real mother, the mother that you get, you’ve got to love her, there’s no choice. She is the mother you needed. She gave you strength, either because she loved you well or because she loved you poorly. She gave you your mission. It’s the dream mother that you have to let go of. The one you pined for, the one you thought your decency promised you. She’s the one you’ve got to bury.