Did you get credit for being sorry if you couldn't explain what you were sorry about?

John Vachon - Boy on porch of general store. Roseland, Virginia, April 1938 (source)

Quitter l’enfance

All of us got crosses to bear, and that's the truth. A man's name the worst of it. (p. 69*)

Did you get credit for being sorry if you couldn't explain what you were sorry about? (p. 91*)

A story is like a virus that can rage only for as long as there are new hosts to infect. (p. 132*)

Was this how things would go from now on, secrets piling on top of secrets? Was this adult life, or simply the natural consequence of going away in the body of a girl and returning in that of a woman? (p. 359*)

But do we ever tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, so help me God," as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven't been? (p. 521*)

And he'd also learned, to his utter surprise, that it was possible not to love your own father. To hate him, in fact, with a kind of purity that filled up the void of love's loss and gave purpose to your own life. A hate that gave you the necessary determination and patience to wait for the day when the power shifted, when you were old enough and big enough to usurp it and secure for yourself an authority equal to his own. (p. 140*)

"I hate my mother," she said. "She's ruining my life."

"Oh, that," Dec said.

"I mean it," she said, and hiccupped loudly.

"Yeah, I know, Cupcake," he said. "But try to keep things in perspective. In a hundred years, we'll all be dead." (p. 442*)

L’American Dream

You don't identify with people worse off than you are. You make your deals, if you can, with those who have more, because you hope one day to have more yourself. Understand that, she claimed, and you understand America, not just Thomaston. (pp. 11-12*)

When I asked if we'd ever get to the point where we'd be one of the lucky ones, she said we already were. The middle, she said, was the real America, the America that mattered, the America that was worth fighting wars to defend. There was just the one problem with being in the fluid middle. You could move up, as we had done, but you could also move down. […]

But in her opinion, she and my father were done moving up in the world. Getting out of the West End was about as much as you could hope for in one generation. (p. 57*)

Ségrégation et racisme

If he had any views on the subject, or indeed any other subject, he gave them no voice. While no actual tests had been run, because of his slowness of speech and manner it was generally conceded that brain damage had occurred, though with a Negro you couldn't be sure. He did follow instructions well enough, had no trouble completing simple tasks and seemed to have an aptitude for anything mechanical, the very sort of thing Mr. Berg himself had little patience for. (pp. 301-302*)

They'd had trouble understanding the poem, he explained, because it had been written by a Negro, Langston Hughes, who lived in Harlem, in black America, which could boast little or no commonality with white America, as represented by Thomaston, New York. Every Negro in Harlem knew what a dream book was, so it was no mistake that Three Mock was the only student--that was the word Mr. Berg had used to describe him, even though he wasn't enrolled in the class--who had any idea what the poem was about. He wasn't smarter, just the only one who had access to a key buried deep in poverty and superstition, racial injustice and despair. Readers in white America were unlikely to discover this key, especially if they had no interest in looking for it, if their parents discouraged the search, if their America was purposely structured to ensure its own prosperity and the continued subjugation of the other America. As Mr. Berg spoke, Noonan was surprised to realize that he himself harbored such subversive thoughts though he lacked the ability to articulate them. (p. 318*)

Le marché de l’art

Like all art dealers, Hugh believed himself to be an integral part of the creative process. (p. 42*)

Talk. Vital to commerce. The end of art. (p. 42)

Souvenirs d'enfance

Nothing at the Spinnarkles' was even remotely interesting to a boy. They had no toys, no games, no books, no clue. There was a television set, but they always turned it off when company arrived, which struck me as downright rude. In our house, the TV we'd purchased shortly after moving to the East End was always on, at least when my father was home. He regarded this as one of the many fine things we had to offer visitors. (p. 58*)

When I set out on my bike, it was usually with a sense of anticipation, not just that I might discover something new, like a cave in Whitcombe Park, or someone new, like Gabriel Mock Junior, but also I might think something new and unexpected, as if I were letting out my brain, its thoughts, much as my mother let out my pants' cuffs. And when returning home from my travels, I had the very pleasurable sense that I was a different boy from the one who'd left and half expected my parents and neighbors to notice the change. (p. 70*)

But as the summer wore on I became troubled by the knowledge that part of me was waiting for, indeed looking forward to, my friend getting hurt. It had, of course, nothing to do with him and everything to do with my own cowardice and jealousy. The jealous part had to do, I think, with my understanding that Bobby's bravery meant he was having more fun, something that my own cowardly bailing out had robbed me of. Each week I told myself I'd be braver, that this Saturday I wouldn't reach out and hold on for safety. I'd surrender control and be flung about, laughing and full of joyous abandon. But every outing was the same as the last, and when the moment came, I grabbed on. (p. 74*)

The Quinns, who lived in an unpainted ruin of a house on lower Division Street, couldn't have been more Irish, of course. Their only talent seemed to be producing feral children they couldn't afford, one right after the other. (p. 137*)

Mr. Berg was more like a dentist with a wire pick, intent on probing each student until he located the nerve he was looking for; to what purpose Noonan couldn't fathom. He obviously wanted them to think, but apparently didn't believe that was possible without first undermining not only their fundamental assumptions but also the very underpinnings of their personalities, and the man's yellow grin made Noonan doubt he was motivated by sheer goodwill. (p. 317*)

*sur ma liseuse

Richard Russo - Bridge of sighs (Knopf, 2007)