Lucia Berlin Quotes

Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc.

I’m having a hard time writing about Sunday. Getting the long hollow feeling of Sundays. No mail and faraway lawn mowers, the hopelessness.

I exaggerate a lot and I get fiction and reality mixed up, but I don't actually ever lie.

The Campus laundry has a sign, like most laundries do, POSITIVELY NO DYEING. I drove all over town with a green bedspread until I came to Angel’s with his yellow sign, YOU CAN DIE HERE ANYTIME.

The world just goes along. Nothing much matters, you know? I mean really matters. but then sometimes, just for a second, you get this grace, this belief that it does matter, a whole lot.

My legs! Lord Jesus stop the pain in my legs!” “Hush John,” Florida said. “That’s only phantom pain.” “Is it real?” I asked her. She shrugged. “All pain is real.

God sends drunks blackouts because if they knew what they had done they would surely die of shame.

The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past. Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse. If I let them in, just one self-indulgent crack, whap, the door will fling open gales of pain ripping through my heart blinding my eyes with shame breaking cups and bottles knocking down jars shattering windows stumbling bloody on spilled sugar and broken glass terrified gagging until with a final shudder and sob I shut the heavy door. Pick up the pieces one more time.

Anybody says he knows just how someone else feels is a fool.

Everything good or bad that has occurred in my life has been predictable and inevitable, especially the choices and actions that have made sure I am now utterly alone.

Death is healing, it tells us to forgive, it reminds us that we don’t want to die alone.

I've never understood how so many barely literate people read the Bible so much. It's hard. In the same way it surprises me that uneducated seamstresses all over the world can figure out how to put in sleeves and zippers.

But what bothers me is that I only accidentally noticed them. What else have I missed? How many times in my life have I been, so to speak, on the back porch, not the front porch? What would have been said to me that I failed to hear? What love might there have been that I didn't feel?

I don't think I ever really liked the world until I met him.

I love houses, all the things they tell me, so that's one reason. I don't mind working as a cleaning woman. It's just like reading a book.

One thing I do know about death. The “better” the person, the more loving and happy and caring, the less of a gap that person’s death makes.

Time stops when someone dies. Of course it stops for them, maybe, but for the mourners time runs amok. Death comes too soon. It forgets the tides, the days growing longer and shorter, the moon. It rips up the calendar. You aren't at your desk or on the subway or fixing dinner for the children. You're reading People in a surgery waiting room, or shivering outside on a balcony smoking all night long. you stare into space, sitting in your childhood bedroom with the lobe on the desk... The bad part is that when you return to your ordinary life all the routines, the marks of the day, seem like senseless lies. all is suspect, a trick to lull us, rock us back into the placid relentlessness of time.

I pity you. All your life you are going to be paralyzed by What Is Done, by what people tell you you should think or do... The best thing that could happen to you would be for you to be uncomfortable once in a while.

When your parents are dead your own death faces you.

The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past. Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse.

As a rule, never work for friends. Sooner or later they resent you because you know so much about them. Or else you’ll no longer like them, because you do.)

The people who were content with each other spoke as little as those who bristled with resentment or boredom; it was the rhythm of their speech that differed, like a lazy tennis ball batted back and forth or the quick swattings of a fly. *

Some lady at a bridge party somewhere started the rumor that to test the honesty of a cleaning woman you leave little rosebud ashtrays around with loose change in them, here and there. My solution to this is to always add a few pennies, even a dime.

Her smile, though, no, it was her laugh, a dusky, deep cascading laughter that caught the joy, implied and mocked the sorrow in every joy.

Fear, poverty, alcoholism, loneliness are terminal illnesses. Emergencies, in fact.

I'll bet the Catholic Church lost out on a lot of would-be nuns when they started dressing like ordinary meter maids.

Most American women are very uncomfortable about having servants. They don’t know what to do while you are there.

Women’s voices always rise two octaves when they talk to cleaning women or cats.

I’ve never understood how so many barely literate people read the Bible so much. It’s hard.

Solitude is an Anglo-Saxon concept.

If there is ever anything you want to know, you just ask me and we'll find the answer in a book." This was a wonderful thing to hear and I believed her.

It has been seven years since you died. Of course what I'll say next is that time has flown by. I got old. All of a sudden, de repente. I walk with difficulty. I even drool. I leave the door unlocked in case I die in my sleep, but it's more likely I'll go endlessly on until I get put away someplace. I am already dotty.... It's not so strange that I talk to my cat but I feel silly because he is totally deaf.

El problema es que cuando vuelves a la vida normal, todas las rutinas, las marcas del día a día parecen mentiras sin sentido. Todo es sospechoso, una trampa para adormecernos, para volver a arroparnos en la plácida inexorabilidad del tiempo.

There was panic in my eyes. I looked into my own eyes and back down at my hands. Horrid age spots, two scars. Un-Indian, nervous, lonely hands. I could see children and men and gardens in my hands.

I smoked while they compared booty. Things they took … nail polish, perfume, toilet paper. Things they were given … one-earrings, twenty hangers, torn bras. (Advice to cleaning women: Take everything that your lady gives you and say Thank you. You can leave it on the bus, in the crack.)

What if our bodies were transparent, like a washing machine window? How wondrous to watch ourselves. Joggers would job even harder, blood pumping away. Lovers would love more. God damn! Look at that old semen go! Diets would improve-- kiwi fruit and strawberries, borscht with sour cream.

(Advice to cleaning women: Take everything that your lady gives you and say Thank you. You can leave it on the bus, in the crack.)

Just ignore him," Dixie said. "He's incorrigible." "No way, mama. Encourage me all you want.

The moon. There's no other moon like one on a clear New Mexico night. It rises over the Sandias and soothes the miles and miles of barren desert with all the quiet whiteness of a first snow.

(Cleaning women: You will get a lot of liberated women. First stage is a CR group; second stage is a cleaning woman; third, divorce.)

The day my father killed off my mother was the day he stopped knowing me.

Anytime you think you hate somebody, what you do is pray for them. Try it, you’ll see.

My sons have all grown now, so I'm down from five washers to one, but one takes just as long.

Everywhere risk and defiance weave through the most mundane daily affairs.

Only Americans smile all the time.

Toda luna, todo año, todo día, todo viento camino, y pasa también. También, toda sangre llega al lugar de su quietud. (Libros de Chilam Balam)

She always seemed dead anyway, but nicely so, like an illustration or an advertisement.

La soledad es un concepto anglosajón. En Ciudad de México, si eres el único pasajero en un autobús y alguien sube, no solo se sentará a tu lado sino que se recostará en ti. (Del cuento Triste idiota)

Las de los gitanos son muertes buenas. O a mí me lo parecen, aunque las enfermeras no opinen lo mismo, ni tampoco los celadores. Siempre llegan en manada, y exigen estar con la persona moribunda, besarla y abrazarla, desenchufan y estropean los televisores y los monitores y los demás aparatos. Lo mejor de las muertes de los gitanos es que nunca hacen callar a sus niños. Los adultos aúllan y lloran y gimen, pero los niños siguen correteando por ahí, juegan y ríen sin que nadie les diga que deben estar tristes o ser respetuosos.

Whenever Ter read a book, rarely—he would rip each page off and throw it away. I would come home, to where the windows were always open or broken and the whole room would be swirling with pages, like Safeway lot pigeons.

She wiped the mirror so she could look at herself. Mediocre and grim, she thought. Not mediocre, her face, with wide gray eyes, fine nose and smile, but it was grim. A good body, but so long disregarded it seemed grim too.

Existe un vínculo entre los pacientes de diálisis, como entre los alcohólicos anónimos o los supervivientes de un terremoto. Son conscientes del indulto, se tratan unos a otros con más ternura y respeto que la gente normal.

Sighs, the rhythms of our heartbeats, contractions of childbirth, orgasms, all flow into time just as pendulum clocks placed next to one another soon beat in unison. Fireflies in a tree flash on and off as one. The sun comes up and it goes down. The moon waxes and wanes and usually the morning paper hits the porch at six thirty-five.

Ter refused to ride buses. The people depressed him, sitting there. He liked Greyhound stations though. We used to go to the ones in San Francisco and Oakland. Mostly Oakland, on San Pablo Avenue. Once he told me he loved me because I was like San Pablo Avenue. He was like the Berkeley dump. I wish there was a bus to the dump. We went there when we got homesick for New Mexico. It is stark and windy and gulls soar like nighthawks in the desert. You can see the sky all around you and above you. Garbage trucks thunder through dust-billowing roads. Gray dinosaurs.

Angel is responsible for all the AA prayers and mottoes. DON’T THINK AND DON’T DRINK. Angel put a cold wet one-sock on Tony’s head and knelt beside him. “Brother, believe me … I’ve been there … right down there in the gutter where you are. I know just how you feel.” Tony didn’t open his eyes. Anybody says he knows just how someone else feels is a fool.

...back to the USA where there is honor and integrity and Lord knows what else, I thought. I got confused. President Bush and Clarence Thomas and antiabortion and AIDS and Duke and crack and homelessness. And everywhere, MTV, cartoons ads, magazines--just war and sexism and violence. In Mexico, at least a can of cement falls off a scaffold on your head, no Uzis or anything personal.

Often they wore their hair in pin curls and a turban, getting their hair ready for—what? This still is an American custom. You see women everywhere in pink hair rollers. It’s some sort of philosophical or fashion statement. Maybe there will be something better, later.

Son preguntas inútiles. La única razón por la que he vivido tanto tiempo es porque fui soltando lastre del pasado. Cierro la puerta a la pena al pesar al remordimiento. Si permito que entren, aunque sea por una rendija de autocompasión, zas, la puerta se abrirá de golpe y una tempestad de dolor me desgarrará el corazón y cegará mis ojos de vergüenza rompiendo tazas y botellas derribando frascos rompiendo las ventanas tropezando sangrienta sobre azúcar derramado y vidrios rotos aterrorizada entre arcadas hasta que con un estremecimiento y sollozo final consiga cerrar la pesada puerta. Y recoja los pedazos una vez más.

the sicker the patients are the less noise they make.

they say a baby's true babtism occurs when hefirst falls out of bed

shutters as old as Herman Melville.

Watcha gonna do when I'm gone, Maggie?... I'll do macrame, punk.

My tears were for my own loneliness, my own blindness.

She didn’t realize how much the people scorned us, how they mocked her banal Communist clichés about their reality.

Edith Wharton novels for two Henry James novels, Lucia Berlin’s short stories for John Cheever’s, Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado for Dany Laferrière’s I Am a Japanese Writer, Dubravka Ugrešić’s Lend Me Your Character for Gogol’s How the Two Ivans Quarreled and Other Stories, Maggie Nelson’s Jane: A Murder for Capote’s In Cold Blood, Lisa Tuttle’s The Pillow Friend for The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James.

Sally wasn't crying about their dead mother or her cancer. She was crying because her husband, Alfonso, had left her after twenty years for a young woman. It seemed a brutal thing to do, just after her mastectomy. She was devastated, but no, she wouldn't ever divorce him, even though the woman was pregnant and he wanted to marry her. "They can just wait until I die. I'll be dead soon, probably next year..." Sally wept but the ocean drowned out the sound.

The first mystery was that the rows of candles under each of the statues of Jesus and Mary and Joseph were all flickering and trembling as if there were gusts of wind when in fact the vast church was shut tight and none of the heavy doors were open. I believed that the spirit of God in the statues was so strong it made the candles flutter and hiss, tremulous with suffering. Each tiny burst of light lit up the caked blood on Jesus’s bony white feet and it looked wet.

El amor te hace desgraciado", decía nuestra madre. "Mojas la almohada llorando hasta quedarte dormida, empañas las cabinas telefónicas, con tus lágrimas, tus sollozos hacen aullar al perro, fumas dos cigarrillos a la vez" (Del cuento Mamá)

Hay cosas de las que la gente nunca habla. No me refiero a las cosas difíciles, como el amor, sino a las más bochornosas, como por ejemplo que los funerales a veces son divertidos o que es emocionante ver arder un edificio. El funeral de Michael fue maravilloso.

Mrs. Armitage had been different, although she was old too. That was in New York at the San Juan Laundry on Fifteenth Street. Puerto Ricans. Suds overflowing onto the floor. I was a young mother then and washed diapers on Thursday mornings. She lived above me, in 4-C. One morning at the laundry she gave me a key and I took it. She said that if I didn’t see her on Thursdays it meant she was dead and would I please go find her body. That was a terrible thing to ask of someone; also then I had to do my laundry on Thursdays.

Los borrachos están indefectiblemente solos. Los suicidas vienen acompañados al menos por otra persona, en general varias más. Que tal vez era la idea en un principio. Mínimo dos agentes de la policía de Oakland. Al final he entendido por qué el suicidio se considera delito.

But much more often I have seen the marriage and the family grow closer, better. Everybody learns to deal, has to help, has to be honest and say it sucks. Everybody has to laugh, everybody has to feel grateful when whatever else the child can’t do he can kiss the hand that brushes his hair.

I like my job in emergency. Blood, bones, tendons seem like affirmations to me. I am awed by the human body, by its endurance. Thank God--because it'll be hours before X-Ray or Demerol. Maybe I'm morbid. I am fascinated by two fingers in a baggie, a glittering switchblade all the way out of a lean pimp's back. I like the fact, in Emergency, everything is reparable, or not.

Useimmat mainarit olivat suomalaisia, ja töistä tultuaan he menivät suihkuun ja saunaan. Saunan edessä oli puinen karsina, ja talvella he juoksivat ulos ja kieriskelivät lumessa. Ensin me tirkistelimme aidanraosta ja hihittelimme miesten sinisiä kaluja ja palleja, mutta sitten me nauroimme ääneen niin kuin hekin, silkasta riemusta, kun oli lunta ja sininen, sininen taivas.

Antes de conocerlo se había sentido muy sola. Le conté que por las mañanas yo decía el nombre de Max incluso antes de abrir los ojos. Ella me dijo que su vida había sido como escuchar un disco horrible una y otra vez, cada día, y en un instante le habían dado vuelta al disco, y sonaba música. Max la oyó y me sonrió. Ves, amor, ahora estamos en la cara B. (Del cuento Hasta la vista)

Sighs, the rhythms of our heartbeats, contractions of childbirth, orgasms, all flow into time just as pendulum clocks placed next to one another soon beat in unison. Fireflies in a tree flash on and off as one. The sun comes up and it goes down. The moon waxes and wanes and usually the morning paper hits the porch at six thirty-five. Time stops when someone dies. Of course it stops for them, maybe, but for the mourners time runs amok. Death comes too soon. It forgets the tides, the days growing longer and shorter, the moon. It rips up the calendar. You aren't at your desk or on the subway or fixing dinner for the children. You're reading People in a surgery waiting room, or shivering outside on a balcony smoking all night long. You stare into space, sitting in your childhood bedroom with the globe on the desk. Persia, the Belgian Congo. The bad part is that when you return to your ordinary life all the routines, the marks of the day, seem like senseless lies. All is suspect, a trick to lull us, to rock us back into the placid relentlessness of time.

But Linda and Bob are good, old friends. I feel their warmth even though they aren't there. Come and blueberry jelly on the sheets. Racing forms and cigarette butts in the bathroom. Notes from Bob to Linda: "Buy some smokes and take the car ... dooh-dah dooh-dah." Drawings by Andrea with Love to Mom. Pizza crusts. I clean their coke mirror with Windex. It is the only place I work that isn't spotless to begin with. It's filthy in fact, Every Wednesday I climb the stairs like Sisyphus into their living room where it always looks like they are in the middle of moving.

Los suspiros, el ritmo de nuestros latidos, las contracciones de parto, los orgasmos, acaban todos por acompasarse, igual que los relojes de péndulo colocados uno cerca del otro pronto sincronizan su vaivén. Las luciérnagas en un árbol se encienden y se apagan como una sola. El sol sale y se pone. La luna crece y mengua y el periódico suele caer en el porche a las seis y treinta y cinco de la mañana. El tiempo se detiene cuando alguien muere. Por supuesto se detiene para ellos, quizá, pero para los que sufren la pérdida el tiempo se desquicia. (Del cuento Espera un momento)

Nunca he entendido cómo es posible que tanta gente prácticamente iletrada pueda leer la Biblia con tanto ahínco. Hace falta valor. De la misma manera, me sorprende que las costureras sin estudios del mundo entero se las ingenien para poner una manga y una cremallera.

Celý život je pre mňa čítanie osobnou útechou.

Quantas vezes na minha vida eu estive, por assim dizer, na varanda dos fundos, e não na varanda da frente? O que será que me disseram que eu não ouvi? Que amor poderia ter existido que eu não senti?

Tudo de bom ou de ruim que aconteceu na minha vida foi previsível e inevitável, sobretudo as escolhas e ações que garantiram que eu viesse a estar agora absolutamente sozinha.

Quem diz que sabe exatamente como outra pessoa se sente é um idiota.

Gentil é uma palavra como caridade; implica um esforço. Como aquela frase de para-choque de caminhão que fala de gestos aleatórios de gentileza. Gentil deveria ser o modo como uma pessoa é sempre, não um gesto que ela opta por fazer.

When I’m with Joe none of this matters. I think he is a reporter because he likes to talk to people. Wherever we go we end up talking to strangers. And liking them. I don’t think I ever really liked the world until I met him. My parents don’t like the world, or me, or they would trust me.

Ceder a los caprichos de un paciente solo sirve para que le tome el gusto a estar enfermo, esa es la verdad pura y dura.

Lo llaman romperse el corazón porque añorar a alguien es un dolor físico real, lo sientes en la sangre y en los huesos.

The love affair between Lisa and Tony was inevitable, or so Tony said. Cheaply predictable, Paul said. Benjamin said nothing at all. She was nineteen years old. Not to excuse her, just that she was at an age that needs a good talking to. She loved it when Tony said things like “We were meant for each other. Our eyebrows both grow together in the middle…” One night when Benjamin came home she said, “Ben. I want words! I want words! I want a word with you!” He looked at her. He took off his bow tie and the nine ruby studs from his tuxedo shirt. He took off his jacket and his shoes and sat down next to her on the rollaway bed. “Babs,” he said. (He used to call her Babs.) He was silent then, taking off his pants and shorts and socks. He sat naked on the bed, tired, and she knew what a good man he was. “I’m a man of few words,” he said. He held her head in his piano-playing hands. “I love you,” he said. “I love you with all my heart. Don’t you know that?” “Yes,” she said and she turned over and cried herself to sleep.

I used to be terrified of going to the bathroom until Uncle John taught me to start at the front door, whisper over and over to myself, “God will take care of me. God will take care of me,” and run like hell.

Ma wrote true stories; not necessarily autobiographical, but close enough for horseshoes. Our family stories and memories have been slowly reshaped, embellished, and edited to the extent that I’m not sure what really happened all the time. Lucia said this didn’t matter: the story is the thing.

Time stops when someone dies. Of course it stops for them, maybe, but for the mourners time runs amok. Death comes too soon. It forgets the tides, the days growing longer and shorter, the moon. It rips up the calendar. You aren’t at your desk or on the subway or fixing dinner for the children. You’re reading People in a surgery waiting room, or shivering outside on a balcony smoking all night long. You stare into space, sitting in your childhood bedroom with the globe on the desk. Persia, the Belgian Congo. The bad part is that when you return to your ordinary life all the routines, the marks of the day, seem like senseless lies. All is suspect, a trick to lull us, rock us back into the placid relentlessness of time.

I hate to see anything lovely by myself.

I don’t regret my alcoholism anymore. Before I left California my youngest son, Joel, came to breakfast. The same son I used to steal from, who had told me I wasn’t his mother. I cooked cheese blintzes; we drank coffee and read the paper, muttering to each other about Rickey Henderson, George Bush. Then he went to work. He kissed me and said So long, Ma. So long, I said.

Aunque nos conociéramos... hacíamos como si no. Esperábamos en la cola, mientras las otras compraban jarabe para la tos de hidrato de terpina con codeína y firmaban en el aparatoso libro de registro. A veces con el nombre verdadero, a veces con uno inventado. Me daba cuenta de que, igual que yo, tampoco sabían cuál de las dos cosas era peor. A veces veía a la misma mujer en cuatro o cinco farmacias distintas en un solo día. Mujeres o madres de adictos.

There was no way I could explain that it had all happened so fast, that I wasn’t smiling away at the cats chewing the birds. It was that my happiness about the sweet peas and the finches hadn’t had time to fade. As

No hay ninguna guía para la muerte. Nadie puede decirte qué hacer, qué es lo que te espera

El problema es que cuando vuelves a la vida normal, todas las rutinas, las marcas del día a día parecen mentiras sin sentido. Todo es sospechoso, una trampa para adormecernos, para volver a arroparnos en la plácida inexorabilidad del tiempo.

He must think her one of those aggressive competent American women. I am competent, she thought, her head lying on the edge of the boat, tears swept away by the high waves.

...well, I guess it is natural when one is dying to sort of sum up what has mattered, what has been beautiful.

I told her funny stories about our mother. How once she tried and tried to open a bag of Granny Goose potato chips, then gave up. "Life is just too damn hard," she said and tossed the bag over her shoulder.