Lisa Alther Quotes

#1. Whatever I experienced in the world that I didn't understand I'd invent a story and workout my understanding of something through the story.

Lisa Alther

#2. I always thought it was a question of achieving some permanent state of tranquillity ... but it's not. It's more like learning to surf. The waves keep rolling in, each different from the last, and you have to ride them, instead of getting pounded to bits.

Lisa Alther

#3. No pain was permanent, and no loss was real. That even though people treated each other abominably, even though they left, even though you let them go, even though you never laid eyes on them again, this fugue that linked you continued, whether you liked it or not.

Lisa Alther

#4. If this was adulthood, the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that now she could eat dessert without eating her vegetables.

Lisa Alther

#5. If you kept moving, you never had to mourn what you were leaving behind.

Lisa Alther

#6. What a surprise to find you could shift the contents of your head like rearranging furniture in a room.

Lisa Alther

#7. It had been fourteen years and I hadn't had anything published. I had 250 rejection slips. I got my first novel published and it was called Kinflicks. It turned out to be a best seller.

Lisa Alther

#8. One didn't issue instructions to comets. Grown children did what they had to do, and parents could only grit their teeth and watch and pray for them to get through it.

Lisa Alther

#9. That's the risk you take if you change: that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along.

Lisa Alther

#10. Successful parenting was like log rolling, and she'd often landed in the drink.

Lisa Alther

#11. The requirements of romantic love are difficult to satisfy in the back seat of a Dodge Dart.

Lisa Alther

#12. The French would eat anything that couldn't outrun them.

Lisa Alther

#13. Depression was a very active state really. Even if you appeared to an observer to be immobilized, your mind was in a frenzy of paralysis. You were unable to function, but were actively despising yourself for it.

Lisa Alther

#14. Dying was apparently a weaning process; all the attachments to familiar people and objects have to be undone.

Lisa Alther

#15. A snake will always be a snake, even if you put a chain around its neck and try to make it walk upright.

Lisa Alther

#16. Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you.

Lisa Alther

#17. The only obvious advantage to being an adult is that you can eat your dessert without haying sampled the vegetables.

Lisa Alther

#18. We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things.

Lisa Alther

#19. The strength you've insisted on assigning to others is actually within yourself.

Lisa Alther

#20. I wrote for twelve years and collected 250 rejection slips before getting any fiction published, so I guess outside reinforcement isn't all that important to me.

Lisa Alther

#21. Inspiration never arrived when you were searching for it.

Lisa Alther

#22. Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease.

Lisa Alther

#23. I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.

Lisa Alther