Elizabeth McCracken Quotes

Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.

It's a happy life, but someone is missing. It's a happy life, and someone is missing.

The cure for unhappiness is happiness, I don't care what anyone says.

Librarian like Stewardess, Certified Public Accountant, Used Car Salesman is one of those occupations that people assume attract a certain deformed personality.

The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.

You can't out-travel sadness. I travel not to get away from my troubles but to see how they look in front of famous buildings

I believe marriage is a spectator sport.

I come from food the way some people come from money. Food was the medium I grew up in, what we talked about, what shaped our days.

Fire is a speed reader, which is why the ignorant burn books: fire races through pages, takes care of all the knowledge, and never bores you with a summary.

Books remember all the things you cannot contain.

In reference works, as in sin, omission is as bad as willful misbehavior.

Enough fine weather and money and a few memorable meals make any place desirable.

Engagements - they are like a prayer before eating, best quick.

My father was right: you could make anybody amazing just by insisting they were.

but you can't spend your whole life hoping people will ask you the right questions. you must learn to love and answer the questions they already ask.

And while I was not an admirer of people in the specific, I liked them in the abstract. It is only the execution of the idea that disappoints.

It's an amazing thing to watch a lizard fold a moth into its mouth, like a sword swallower who specialises in umbrellas.

I wanted to acknowledge that life goes on but that death goes on, too. A person who is dead is a long, long story.

For about half an hour in mid-1992, I knew as much as any layperson about the pleasures of remote access of other people's computers.

There are two MFA programs here at the University of Texas, and I read on the jury of both of them. And it's amazing to me how many really talented young writers seem to fear humor.

You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.'

Humor reminds you, when you're flattened by sorrow, that you're still human.

Do not trust an architect: he will always try to talk you into an atrium.

Like all good mothers, she always knew the worst was going to happen and was disappointed and relieved when it finally did.

Whatever you have lost there are more of, just not yours.