Annie Proulx quotes

Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton.
- Annie Proulx

You are a knowledgeable girl, ”he said“ and a damn good-lookin one, though upholstered. Care for a beer?
- Annie Proulx

It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, worldview and thoughts.
- Annie Proulx

Alkaline water tastes dreadful and was the scourge of covered wagon parties crossing Wyoming for neither men nor beasts could drink it for fear of blistering their tonsils and suffering agonizing stomach cramps.
- Annie Proulx

Everything that counts is for love, Quoyle. It’s the engine of life.
- Annie Proulx

Captain James Duke, in his early fifties, was complicated, dark-haired, and somewhat handsome. He took a hard-headed and hard-handed stance to disguise an inner recognition of worthlessness. Quixotic, he swung from morbid self-pity to rigid authority over his crews and himself. The future flickered before him as a likely series of disappointments.
- Annie Proulx

If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit Awards.
- Annie Proulx

What he had was what he pretended.
- Annie Proulx

He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
- Annie Proulx

Archie was an expert at dividing the affairs of life into men's business and women's business. An empty cupboard and a full plate were the man's business, a full cupboard and an empty plate the concern of the woman.
- Annie Proulx

There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering.
- Annie Proulx

He'd call him up that night. Tell him. What? That he could gut a cod while he talked about advertising space and printing costs? That he was wondering if love came in other colors than the basic black of none and the red heat of obsession?
- Annie Proulx

The words poured down with the rain.
- Annie Proulx

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.
- Annie Proulx

A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.
- Annie Proulx

If a piece of knotted string can unleash the wind, and if a drowned man can awaken, then I believe a broken man can heal.
- Annie Proulx

For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.
- Annie Proulx

Anyway, there's something wrong with everybody and it's up to you to know what you can handle.
- Annie Proulx

I am influenced by words and the chewiness of language.
- Annie Proulx

The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her.
- Annie Proulx

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.
- Annie Proulx

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
- Annie Proulx