01c. 1976 ADFor writers - even sportswriters - bad news is always easier than good, since it is, after all, more familiar.Richard Ford / quote ↗
02c. 1976 ADShe ordered a martini and encouraged me to, but said she couldn't drink it with her medication. She just liked seeing it in front of her, like the old days, all set to do its little magic.Richard Ford / quote ↗
04c. 1976 ADOne of the down-side factors to living alone is that you sometimes get overly absorbed with how exact segments of time are consumed, and can begin to feel a pleasure with life that is hopelessly tinged with longing.Richard Ford / quote ↗
05c. 1976 ADI'm intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.Richard Ford / quote ↗
06c. 1976 ADIt was as if they'd discovered something that had once been there but had gotten hidden or misunderstood or forgotten over time, and they were charmed by it once more, and by one another. Which seems only right and expectable for married people. They caught a glimpse of the person they fell in love with, and who sustained life. For some, that vision must never dim - as is true of me. But it was odd that our parents should catch their glimpse, and have frustration, anxiety and worry pass away like clouds dispersing after a storm, refind their best selves, but for that glimpse to happen just before landing our family in ruin.Richard Ford / quote ↗
07c. 1976 ADThe longer they stayed on, and the better they knew each other, the better she at least could see their mistake, and the more misguided their lives became—like a long proof in mathematics in which the first calculation is wrong, following which all other calculations move you further away from how things were when they made sense.Richard Ford / quote ↗
08c. 1976 ADWe do not, after all, deal in truths, only potentialities. Too much truth can be worse than death, and last longer.Richard Ford / quote ↗
09c. 1976 ADOur ex-wifes always harbour secrets about us that make them irresistable. Until, of course, we remember who we are and what we did and why we are not married anymore.Richard Ford / quote ↗
10c. 1976 ADDreaminess is, among other things, a state of suspended recognition, and a response to too much useless and complicated factuality. Its symptoms can be a long-term interest in the weather, or a sustained soaring feeling, or a bout of the stares that you sometimes can not even know about except in retrospect, when the time may seem fogged.Richard Ford / quote ↗
11c. 1976 ADHe was like my father. They each wanted me to be their audience, to hear the things they needed to express.Richard Ford / quote ↗
13c. 1976 ADIn their faces--plenty of them were handsome, but ruined--I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.Richard Ford / quote ↗
14c. 1976 ADAmerica beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism.Richard Ford / quote ↗
