Lore Segal Quotes

Story has a mind of its own and tells things sometimes it might have preferred us not to know. Stories operate like dreams; both veil what is to be uncovered, neither is capable of the coverup.

That’s what I mean,” said Ilka. “We are, all of us, ridiculous. All we can hear is somebody saying we are less than perfect. And it’s not as if we hadn’t already got that figured out for ourselves.” “I never mind being told when I’m wrong.” Ilka said, “Will you forgive me if I don’t believe you?

I once wrote a suicide story: A woman watches a truck bearing down toward the place on the sidewalk where she stands waiting to cross. She thinks, ‘If that truck were to run me over I wouldn’t have to think what to get for supper.’ The truck passes. The woman crosses to the supermarket and takes out her shopping list. It was called ‘Truck.

Like the Dorothy Parker heroine who spends her days and nights not calling the lover who does not call her,

Jack said, “No more buying books from Amazon till I’ve read the ones on my shelves.

a God so holy we may not take his name into our mouths, whose nature is to be inapprehensible. . . . This is the grandest, purest concept of God, and one which story can do nothing with, which the human imagination constantly betrays ["Our Dream of the Good God," Out of the Garden].

Story has a mind of its own and tells things sometimes it might have preferred us not to know. Stories operate like dreams; both veil what is to be uncovered, neither is capable of a coverup ["Our Dream of the Good God," Out of the Garden].

Ilka’s triangle of pizza behaved like Dali’s watch and kept folding away from her mouth.

Are we, all of us, wanting to clean up – to simplify what we leave our children to deal with? I have files of papers that I will never read again but can’t throw out because I would have to read them to know that what I’m throwing out is what I would never read again.

another. MARCEL PROUST

I used to think, William, that it wasn’t love if you left your towel scrumpled after use, though I told and told you it couldn’t dry. I was always going to love you, William, as soon as you shaped up. That’s why I nagged and nagged you to straighten your towel out. Also, you do have a tendency to whine if somebody turns down a poem, and the back of your neck is skimpy. I used to kiss it to apologize, or was that love?