Elizabeth McCracken Quotes

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

Elizabeth McCracken

Grief, Grieving, Tragedy

Elizabeth McCracken (2008). “An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir”, p.38, Hachette UK

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

Elizabeth McCracken

Care, Unhappiness, Cures

Elizabeth McCracken (2001). “Niagara Falls All Over Again”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

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

Elizabeth McCracken

Book, Ideas, Library

Elizabeth McCracken (2013). “The Giant's House”, p.8, Random House

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

Elizabeth McCracken

Miscarriage, Happy Life, Missing

"Two mothers, two lost babies" by Rachel Stockley, www.theguardian.com. April 4, 2009.

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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

Elizabeth McCracken

Sadness, Looks, Trouble

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I believe marriage is a spectator sport.

Elizabeth McCracken

Marriage, Sports, Believe

Elizabeth McCracken (2013). “The Giant's House”, p.127, Random House

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Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.

Elizabeth McCracken

Lying, Book, Library

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truthfully, this is the fabric of all my fantasies: love shown not by a kiss or a wild look or a careful hand but by a willingness for research. i don’t dream of someone who understands me immediately, who seems to have known me my entire life, who says, i know me too. i want someone keen to learn my own strange organization, amazed at what’s revealed; someone who asks, and then what, and then what?

Elizabeth McCracken

Dream, Kissing, Hands

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As for me, I believe that if there's a God - and I am as neutral on the subject as is possible - then the most basic proof of His existence is black humor. What else explains it, that odd, reliable comfort that billows up at the worst moments, like a beautiful sunset woven out of the smoke over a bombed city.

Elizabeth McCracken

Beautiful, Believe, Sunset

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All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch, the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of the sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins.

Elizabeth McCracken

Cousin, Children, Sibling

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After most deaths, I imagine, the awfulness lies in how everything’s changed….there’s a hole. It’s person-shaped and it follows you everywhere…. For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We’d been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life.

Elizabeth McCracken

Lying, Waiting, Imagine

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There are writers who can show you the excellence of their brains and writers who show you the depths of their souls: I don't know any writer who does both at the same time as brilliantly as Roxane Gay.

Elizabeth McCracken

Gay, Soul, Brain

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I had never wanted to be one of those girls in love with boys who would not have me. Unrequited love - plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing - turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn't want, couldn't use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness. Neither could James. He understood. In such situations, you do one of two things - you either walk away and deny yourself, or you do sneaky things to get what you need. You attend weddings, you go for walks. You say, yes. Yes, you're my best friend, too.

Elizabeth McCracken

Girl, Unrequited Love, Boys

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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.

Elizabeth McCracken

Ideas, People, Execution

Elizabeth McCracken (2013). “The Giant's House”, p.189, Random House

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Despite popular theories, I believe people fall in love based not on good looks or fate but on knowledge. Either they are amazed by something a beloved knows that they themselves do not know; or they discover a common rare knowledge; or they can supply knowledge to someone who's lacking. Hasn't everyone found a strange ignorance in someone beguiling? . . .Nowadays, trendy librarians, wanting to be important, say, Knowledge is power. I know better. Knowledge is love.

Elizabeth McCracken

Falling In Love, Believe, Ignorance

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A Lucky Child is an extraordinary story, simply and beautifully told. Heartbreaking and thrilling, it examines what it means to be human, in every good and awful sense. Perhaps most amazingly of all, Thomas Buergenthal remembers and renders the small mysteries and grand passions of childhood, even a childhood lived under the most horrific circumstances.

Elizabeth McCracken

Children, Mean, Passion

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

Elizabeth McCracken

Father, Insisting

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Books remember all the things you cannot contain.

Elizabeth McCracken

Book, Remember

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Can I tell you something? It wasn't so bad. Not so bad at all right then, me scowling at the dirt, James in his bed, the way it always always was. Look, if that's all that happened, if his dying just meant that I would be waiting for him to say something instead of listening to him say something, it would have been fine.

Elizabeth McCracken

Waiting, Listening, Dying

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

Elizabeth McCracken

Car, People, Personality

Elizabeth McCracken (2013). “The Giant's House”, p.7, Random House

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For some people, history is simply what your wife looks good standing in front of. It’s what’s cast in bronze, or framed in sepia tones, or acted out with wax dummies and period furniture. It takes place in glass bubbles filled with water and chunks of plastic snow; it’s stamped on souvenir pencils and summarized in reprint newspapers. History nowadays is recorded in memorabilia. If you can’t purchase a shopping bag that alludes to something, people won’t believe it ever happened.

Elizabeth McCracken

Believe, Shopping, Glasses

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People think librarians are unromantic, unimaginative. This is not true. We are people whose dreams run in particular ways. Ask a mountain climber what he feels when he sees a mountain; a lion tamer what goes through his mind when he meets a new lion; a doctor confronted with a beautiful malfunctioning body. The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.

Elizabeth McCracken

Beautiful, Running, Dream

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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.

Elizabeth McCracken

Book, Fire, Race

Elizabeth McCracken (2013). “The Giant's House”, p.250, Random House

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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.

Elizabeth McCracken

People, Answers, Whole Life

Elizabeth McCracken (2013). “The Giant's House”, p.85, Random House

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Unrequited love–plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing–turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn't want, couldn't use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness.

Elizabeth McCracken

Unrequited Love, Boys, Missing

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Born: September 16, 1966
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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