The collection / 36 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

36 results · Page 2 of 2Play this collection ▷

01c. 1959 AD

Though Jonah felt transfixed inside his own childhood, no one else saw him as a child. He was already over the hump of middle age, heading rapidly toward those year that no one like to speak of. The best parts had already passed for people Jonah's age. By now you were meant to have become what you would finally be, and to gracefully and unobtrusively stay in that state for the rest of your life.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

02c. 1959 AD

We had a good marriage," he said. "I just thought it would be so much longer." Then he shrugged, and coughed away a sob, this thin man in his sixties with the soft androgynous face that aging seemed to bring, as though all the hormones were finally mixed up in a big coed pot because it just didn't matter anymore.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

03c. 1959 AD

But here was where the question of talent became slippery, for who could say whether Spirit-in-the-Woods had ever pulled incipient talent out of a kid and activated it, or whether the talent had been there all along and would have come out even without this place.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

04c. 1959 AD

I always thought talent was everything, but maybe it was always money. Or even class. Or if not class exactly, connections.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

05c. 1959 AD

She understood that it had never just been about talent: it had also always been about money. Ethan was brilliant at what he did, and he might well have made it even if Ash’s father hadn’t encouraged him, but it really helped that Ethan had grown up in a sophisticated city, and that he had married into a wealthy family. Ash was talented, but not all that talented. This was the thing that no one said, not once. But of course it was fortunate that Ash didn’t have to worry about money while trying to think about art. Her wealthy childhood had given her a head start, and now Ethan had picked up where her childhood had left off.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

06c. 1959 AD

Jealousy was essentially "I want what you have," while envy was "I want what you have, but I also want to take it away so you can't have it.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

07c. 1959 AD

Twitter," said Manny, waving his hand. "You know what that is? Termites with microphones.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

08c. 1959 AD

The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

09c. 1959 AD

The minute you had kids you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defensively, and everyone who was outside the walls—even if you'd once been best friends—was now just that, outsiders.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

10c. 1959 AD

No, of course not. I just feel content,” she said carefully.“That’s an old person’s word,” said Ethan.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

11c. 1959 AD

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗

12c. 1959 AD

You sometimes heard about the marginally talented wives of powerful men publishing children's books or designing handbags or, most commonly, becoming photographers. There might even be a show of the wife's work in a well-known but slightly off gallery. Everyone would come see it, and they would treat the wife with unctuous respect. Her photographs of celebrities without makeup, and seascapes, and street people, would be enormous, as though size and great equipment could make up for whatever else was missing.

Meg Wolitzer / quote

↗