Top Gail Caldwell Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Gail Caldwell Biography

Gail Caldwell (born January 20, 1951) is an American critic. She was the chief book critic for The Boston Globe, where she was on staff from 1985 to 2009. Caldwell was the winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. The award was for eight Sunday reviews and two other columns written in 2000. According to the Pulitzer Prize board, those columns were noted for “her insightful observations on contemporary life and literature.”

Read about Gail Caldwell in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Gail Caldwell Quotes

If writers possess a common temperament, it's that they tend to be shy egomaniacs; publicity is the spotlight they suffer for the recognition they crave.

Common, Possess, Shy, Spotlight, Suffering

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

Assuming, Core, Embrace, Feeling Sad, Maybe, Sadness

The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.

Hell, Loss, Real, Told

Old dogs can be a regal sight. Their exuberance settles over the years into a seasoned nobility, their routines become as locked into yours as the quietest and kindest of marriages.

Dog, Nobility, Quietest, Routines, Sight, Years

You can’t change the tale so that you turned left one day instead of right, or didn’t make the mistake that might have saved your life a day later. We don’t get those choices. The story is what got you here, and embracing its truth is what makes the outcome bearable.

Choices, Mistake, One Day, Outcome, Right, Tale

The truth, or success, of any writer's story lies partly in its specificity and its emotional honesty.

Emotional, Honesty, Lying, Success, Truth, Writing

Scratch a fantasy and you'll find a nightmare.

Fantasy, Nightmare, Scratch, Scratches

the mother's first job is to raise a daughter strong enough to outlast her.

Daughter, Enough, Mother, Raise, Strong

The belief that life was hard and often its worst battles were fought in private, that it was possible to walk through fear and come out scorched but still breathing.

Battle, Belief, Breathing, Fear, Hard, Scorched

Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.

Feels, Loss, Survive, Violation

It's and old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.

Died, Everything, Friend, Shared, Stories, Story

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

Recovery, Loss, Different, Kinder, Losses

I'd confused need with love and love with sacrifice.

And Love, Confused, Love, Sacrifice

The Hours is in fact a lovely triumph. Cunningham honors both Mrs. Dalloway and its creator with unerring sensitivity, thanks to his modesty of intention and his sovereignly affecting prose. . . . With his elliptical evocation of Mrs. Dalloway, he has managed to pay great but quiet tribute -- reminding us of the gorgeous, ferocious beauty of what endures.

Beauty, Facts, Honor, Lovely, Sovereignly, Thanks

It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur, aand epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part-- time and space and heart's weariness are the blander executioners or human connection.

Distance, Dying, Executioners, Heart, Taken, Time

The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline had died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence, and linear expectations, where I thught grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that graduallu receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity.

Blow, Grief, Loss, Sadness, Simple

That she was irreplaceable became a bittersweet loyalty: Her death was what I had now instead of her.

Bittersweet, Instead, Irreplaceable, Loyalty

the territory of grief. . . is both cruel and commonplace.

Commonplace, Cruel, Grief, Territory

What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.

Grief, Missing Someone, Part, Simple, Tell

The flaw is the thing we love.

Flaw, Flaws, Love, Thing