"All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal."

--

Source : Steven Millhauser (2011). “We Others: New & Selected Stories”, p.243, Vintage

Steven Millhauser

“I can exchange opinion with any neighbouring mind, I have as healthy flesh and blood as any rhymer's had, But O! my Heart could bear no more when the upland caught the wind; I ran, I ran, from my love's side because my Heart went mad.”
“There is no vacation, no experience, no dream home, and no thing outside of God that can bring rest in the essence of who you are. Your soul will be restless until it finds rest in Him.”
“The word and the shadow of the word / makes a thing both itself and something else / till we are metaphors and not ourselves . . .”
“If I could be reincarnated as a fashion accessory, it would be a shopping bag.”
“Belief means willing yourself to give all your attention to living with loving gladness in the world you think really exists.”
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
“In relative youth, we assume we'll remember everything. Someone should urge the young to think otherwise.”
“We emphasize that we believe in change because we were born of it, we have lived by it, we prospered and grew great by it. So the status quo has never been our god, and we ask no one else to bow down before it..”

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