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


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The nail doesn't choose the time or the circumstances in which it is drawn to the magnet

William Maxwell


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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

Tags: gentlemen social-class



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Love, even of the most ardent and soul-destroying kind, is never caught by the lens of the camera.

William Maxwell

Tags: love



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Innocence is defined in dictionaries as freedom from guilt or sin, especially from lack of knowledge; purity of heart; blamelessness; guilelessness; simplicity, etc.

William Maxwell

Tags: innocence



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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


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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


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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


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The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice,

William Maxwell


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My father represented authority, which meant—to me—that he could not also represent understanding.

William Maxwell


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