Quotes by Harold Brodkey - Page 1

But death's acquisitive instincts will win.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Instinct
Winning
Instincts
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Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Alive
Kicking It
Radio
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Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Alive
Public Radio
Radio
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Death is not soft-mouthed, vague-footed, nearby. It is in the hall.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Halls
Vague
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I am startled when people are themselves and are not my thoughts of them.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
My Thoughts
People
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This identity, this mind, this particular cast of speech, is nearly over.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Identity
Nearly
Cast
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Death and I are head to head in a total collision, pure and mutual distaste.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Collision
Distaste
Mutual
Pure
Head
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My protagonists are my mother's voice and the mind I had when I was thirteen.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Mind
Mother
Voice
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I have the sense that if I push too hard or too far into memory I’ll come apart.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Hard
Ifs
Memories
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I often thought men stank of rage; it is why I preferred women, and homosexuals.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Men
Homosexual
Rage
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You really can’t write unless you read. You have to know what the game is all about.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Games
Knows
Writing
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Nothing I have ever written has been admired as much as the announcement of my death.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Announcements
Has Beens
Written
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Almost the first thing I did when I became ill was to buy a truly good television set.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Firsts
Ill
Television
Became
Buy
First Thing
Television Set
The First Thing
Truly
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Often writing is like a struggle to get back to a kind of belated, quite impure virginity.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Kind
Struggle
Writing
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I feel sorry for the man who marries you... because everyone thinks you're sweet and you're not.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Home
Sorry
Sweet
Thinks
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I have thousands of opinions still - but that is down from millions - and, as always, I know nothing.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Knows
Millions
Opinion
Stills
Opinions
Thousands
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I'm sixty-two, and it's ecological sense to die while you're still productive, die and clear a space for others, old and young.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Space
Two
Young
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Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Agony
Ill
Pain
Shock
Unfamiliar
Time Myself Me
Wrench
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Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
New York
Anchors
Reputation
Thinking
Abroad
Anchored
Any Other Place
Literary
Mostly
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I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Accomplishment
Insistence
Intellect
Looks
Merit
Nonsense
Life Look See
Duties
Merits
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True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Birth
Long Ago
People
Stories
Begin
Account
Acts
Autobiographical
Tale
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It is death that goes down to the center of the earth, the great burial church the earth is, and then to the curved ends of the universe, as light is said to do
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Church
Earth
Light
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It is death that goes down to the center of the earth, the great burial church the earth is, and then to the curved ends of the universe, as light is said to do.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Burial
Center
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Memory, so complete and clear or so evasive, has to be ended, has to be put aside, as if one were leaving a chapel and bringing the prayer to an end in one's head.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Chapel
Leaving
Memories
Prayer
Aside
Bringing
Complete
Ended
Evasive
Memory
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The disparity between what people said life was and what I knew it to be unnerved me at times, but I swore that nothing would ever make me say life should be anything.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Disparity
People
Said Life
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I am in an adolescence in reverse, as mysterious as the first, except that this time I feel it as a decay of the odds that I might live for a while, that I can sleep it off.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Adolescence
Decay
Mysterious
Odds
Sleep
Time I Am Live
Time I Am Feel
Except
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God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without miracle—or instruction.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Events
Miracle
Real
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It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Darkness
Funeral
Loss
Oneself
Visiting
Unknown
Wild
Enter
Monumental
Purest
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God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without miracle - or instruction.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Defined
Disease
Immensity
Instruction
Event
Merely
Pedestrian
Perfectly
Tightly
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In New York one lives in the moment rather more than Socrates advised, so that at a party or alone in your room it will always be difficult to guess at the long term worth of anything.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
New York
Long
Party
Term
Advised
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I awake with a not entirely sickened knowledge that I am merely young again and in a funny way at peace, an observer who is aware of time's chariot, aware that some metamorphosis has occurred.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Awake
Metamorphosis
Way
Young
Chariot
Entirely
Funny Way
Merely
Observer
Occurred
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In our opposed forms of loneliness and self-recognition and recognition of the other, we touched each other often as we spoke; and on shore in explorations of the past, we strolled with our arms linked.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Loneliness
Past
Self
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So an autobiography about death should include, in my case, an account of European Jewry and of Russian and Jewish events - pogroms and flights and murders and the revolution that drove my mother to come here.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Autobiography
Revolution
Jewish
Account
Drove
Flights
Include
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It bothers me that I won't live to see the end of the century, because, when I was young, in St. Louis, I remember saying to Marilyn, my sister by adoption, that that was how long I wanted to live: seventy years.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Sister
Adoption
Century
Long
Years
Louis
Me Long Remember
Bothers
Marilyn
Saying
Seventy
St. Louis
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I am sensible of the velocity of the moments, and entering that part of my head alert to the motion of the world I am aware that life was never perfect, never absolute. This bestows contentment, even a fearlessness.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Contentment
Entering
Fearlessness
Moments
Perfect
Sensible
Velocity
Life World I Am
Absolute
Alert
Aware
Motion
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If you like to read, sometimes it's interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet... Sometimes you can go looking for illumination.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Drunk
Illumination
Reality
Sober
Fiction Writer
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I was always crazy about New York, dependent on it, scared of it - well, it is dangerous - but beyond that there was the pressure of being young and of not yet having done work you really liked, trademark work, breakthrough work
Harold Brodkey / Writer
New York
Crazy
Done
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I was always crazy about New York, dependent on it, scared of it - well, it is dangerous - but beyond that there was the pressure of being young and of not yet having done work you really liked, trademark work, breakthrough work.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Breakthrough
Dependent
Pressure
Work Done Always
Work Always Done
Trademark
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I can't change the past, and I don't think I would. I don't expect to be understood. I like what I've written, the stories and two novels. If I had to give up what I've written in order to be clear of this disease, I wouldn't do it.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Disease
Giving Up
Past
Thinking
Understood
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Athletes have studied how to leap and how to survive the leap some of the time and return to the ground. They don't always do it well. But they are our philosophers of actual moments and the body and soul in them, and of our maneuvers in our emergencies and longings.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Health
Athlete
Exercise
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I have AIDS. I am surprised that I do. I have not been exposed since1977, which is to say that my experience, myadventures in homosexuality took place largely in the1960s and '70s, and back then I relied on time and abstinence to indicate my degree of freedom from infectionand to protect others and myself.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Abstinence
Degrees
Homosexuality
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the cold winds of insecurity... hadn't shredded the dreamy chrysalis of his childhood. He was still immersed in the dim, wet wonder of the folded wings that might open if someone loved him; he still hoped, probably, in a butterfly's unthinking way, for spring and warmth. How the wings ache, folded so, waiting; that is, they ache until they atrophy.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Butterfly
Spring
Wind
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I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to understand but is obviously calk, someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquility, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to re-enter and be riven. ... I admire the authority of being on one's knees in front of the event.
Harold Brodkey / Writer
Liars
Thinking
Writing
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Harold Brodkey Quotes - Page 1

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