Quotes by Lydia Millet - Page 2 | QuoteForever

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The summer after I got divorced, my children asked to sleep in my bed again. It would be the first time we'd shared a bed since they were infants.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Divorced
Be The First
Infants
Shared
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Domestic realism has dominated the American marketplace for decades now. It leeches into literary fiction, and I don't think it's that rich a vein.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Decades
Marketplace
Realism
Domestic
Literary
Literary Fiction
Vein
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In December 2011, a wild gray wolf set foot in California, the first sighting in almost a century. He'd wandered in from Oregon, looking for a mate.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
California
December
Gray
Oregon
Wild
Foot
Mate
Wandered
Wolf
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After numerous generations of people dedicated to killing wolves on the North American continent, one generation devoted itself to letting wolves live.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Dedicated
Devoted
Generations
Continent
Letting
North American
Numerous
Wolves
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The male domination and chauvinism of the comics form is either being wittily lampooned in 'Watchmen' or handily perpetuated, depending on whom you ask.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Domination
Male
Depending
Watchmen
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Fiction should be an ethically safe space, free of fancy ideas. It should be dedicated modestly to relationships or escapism or the needs of luscious voyeurs.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Dedicated
Escapism
Fancy
Ethically
Modestly
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When I was 16, I went to Berlin - West Berlin, since at that time a wall still divided the city - to live for three months with a family on an exchange program.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Berlin
Divided
Months
Program
Three
Wall
Since
Exchange
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In 1805, the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, making their way across the West, were warned by American Indian tribes of grizzly bears' awesome strength.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Bears
Explorers
Indian
Tribes
Awesome
Clark
William
Lewis
Warned
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If the dinosaurs are any indication, there's a place in our pantheon for the extinct. My son has a blue plushy allosaurus he calls Spot-Spot, with whom he often sleeps.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Blue
Dinosaurs
Indication
Calls
Extinct
Sleeps
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In Hiroshima, bombed Aug. 6, 1945, no warning was given of the air attack, and thus no escape was possible for the mostly women, children and old people who fell victim.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Hiroshima
Old People
Victim
Warning
Women People Children
Attack
Bombed
Escape
Fell
Women Children People
Thus
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If you're doing creative work, that work should never feel trivial - even if what you're doing is for hire or lightly intended. Even the mundane doesn't have to be trivial.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Creative Work
Mundane
Work Feel Doing
Hire
Intended
Lightly
Trivial
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We read our children stories starring elephants and monkeys and bears to teach them about nobility, curiosity and courage, to warn them against selfishness and stubbornness.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Courage
Bears
Curiosity
Elephants
Monkeys
Nobility
Selfishness
Stubbornness
Teach
Warn
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The question of one versus two species of African elephants isn't about settling an arcane DNA argument; it's about life or death for these majestic, extraordinary creatures.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Arcane
Dna
Elephants
Extraordinary
Majestic
Settling
Species
Versus
African
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Oil drilling and coal mining are killing endangered wildlife, polluting rivers, creating smog over wilderness areas and blocking wildlife corridors in America's most treasured landscapes.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Coal
Drilling
Mining
Rivers
Treasured
Wilderness
Wildlife
Blocking
Corridor
Landscapes
Polluting
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Beneath the violet pillar, in the vacuum before the roar of the cloud, there came a soft sound that might have been heard by those who listened closely: the gentle sigh of an idea unbound.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Clouds
Ideas
Sound
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Trophy hunters are not Everyman. These world-traveling endangered-species shooters are a far cry from the hunters who spend weekends in the American outback near their suburban or rural homes.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Cry
Everyman
Hunters
Homes
Spend
Near
Rural
Suburban
Trophy
Weekends
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More than two million years ago, mammoths and Asian elephants took different evolutionary paths - and around the same time, according to DNA research, so did their lumbering relatives in Africa.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Dna
Elephants
According
Evolutionary
Million Years
Paths
Relatives
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The word suffering is full and whole and perfect as a pierced heart, sweet, rushing and tender ... Suffering is the joy of someone about to be martyred, illumination of something given up as an offer.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Grief
Heart
Sweet
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The comic novels I did when I was in my 20s had a harder edge - less sympathy for people. Or a sympathy that was harder to detect: Characters' foibles and obsessive bents were unrelenting, like caricatures.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Sympathy
Caricatures
Obsessive
Unrelenting
Detect
Edge
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I have a king bed, one of those memory-foam mattresses that doesn't jiggle as you get in or out. Even if you cleaved it down the middle with a pickax, the thing wouldn't tremble. It's practically earthquake-proof.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Bed
Practically
Tremble
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On climate change, we have only a handful of years to make massive changes, according to the scientists. The politicians have to act, and only the people can make them, because Royal Dutch Shell's not going to do it.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Climate Change
Dutch
Handful
Massive
Royal
According
Change People Climate
Change Climate People
Only A Handful
Scientists
Shell
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I worry about the very pernicious way we elevate and separate ourselves from other beasts, the way we rationalize our comfort and ease, our worship of the self, as healthy. It's enticing, but with a terrible taint of evil.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Comfort
Ease
Enticing
Pernicious
Rationalize
Worship
Beasts
Elevate
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The Safari Club International has worked the legal system hard to try to keep polar bears - threatened primarily by climate change, but also by hunting - on the list of creatures people can import as trophies after shooting.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Legal
Bears
Climate Change
Hunting
Legal System
Shooting
Threatened
Trophies
Change Keep People
Import
List
Polar
Primarily
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Economic and health statistics, as well as police-violence statistics, shed light on the pressures on American Indian communities and individuals: Indian youths have the highest suicide rate of any United States ethnic group.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Indian
Rate
Shed
Statistics
Communities
Ethnic
Youths
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In October 2014, for the first time in almost three-quarters of a century, a gray wolf was seen loping along the forested North Rim of the Grand Canyon, in Arizona. She had walked hundreds of miles, probably from Wyoming or Idaho.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Arizona
Century
First Time
Grand Canyon
Idaho
Miles
October
Wyoming
Time First Time First
Almost
Seen
Canyon
Grand
Hundreds
North
Rim
She
Three-Quarters
Walked
Wolf
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Historically, grizzlies ranged from Alaska to Mexico, with at least 50,000 bears living in the western half of the contiguous United States. With European colonization, the bears were shot, poisoned, and trapped to the brink of extinction.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Alaska
Bears
Colonization
Extinction
Half
Mexico
States
Trapped
Western
Shot
Brink
Historically
Least
Poisoned
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It is not learning we need at all. Individuals need learning but the culture needs something else, the pulse of light on the sea, the warm urge of huddling together to keep out the cold. We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Eye
Light
Sea
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In the 1970s, Safari Club International asked the federal government to approve its import of 1,125 not-yet-killed trophies of 40 endangered species, including gorillas, orangutans and tigers, according to the Humane Society of the United States.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Endangered Species
Federal Government
Humane
Species
Tigers
Trophies
According
Approve
Import
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Both climate change and extinction are results of our tyranny over the nonhuman world and our domination of, and exploitation of, whole categories of each other - and those, in turn, are clearly linked to agriculture, the cattle-industrial complex, capitalism.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Change
Agriculture
Capitalism
Categories
Climate
Climate Change
Domination
Exploitation
Extinction
Linked
Results
Tyranny
Whole
Change World Climate
Both
Those
Clearly
Complex
Each
Over
Other
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Without elephants, Africa's landscape would be unrecognizable, yet these animals have fallen by the hundreds of thousands as a result of two enormous waves of poaching in this century - one in the 1970s and 1980s, the other, beginning around 2009, now underway.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Elephants
Enormous
Landscape
Hundreds
Hundreds Of Thousands
Underway
Waves
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When 'Watchmen' was published in 1986, the vast majority of comics readers deemed it a watershed in comics history. The 12-part serial comic book was widely acclaimed as a genius subversion of the superhero genre, and it did much to popularize comics to adults.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Comic Book
Genre
Subversion
Superhero
Deemed
Vast
Published
Vast Majority
Watchmen
Widely
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Kate Bernheimer's fiction offers a unique and delicate gift, the tempting mirage of a grace that constantly escapes. The Complete Tales of Merry Gold is an exceptional, lovely book, beautifully enigmatic, speaking a language that mysteriously evokes the unspoken.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Book
Grace
Unique
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We paint a slow picture. You can see the brushstrokes. We don't get to the point, and sometimes when we do, our readers don't notice, in fact. It's so couched in nuance, it can fly right over a person's head. 'What was that you said? I couldn't quite make it out.'
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Nuance
Paint
Notice
Slow
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Wyoming, home to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons, is also the country's largest coal producer and one of its largest gas drillers. Two-thirds of the state's gas-drilling rigs are on public lands in the increasingly industrialized Greater Green River Basin.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Coal
Gas
Green
Public Lands
Wyoming
Yellowstone
Grand
Increasingly
Industrialized
Largest
Producer
National Park
Park
River
Two-Thirds
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Within the macho-melodrama tropes of the superhero genre, it's fair to say 'Watchmen' stands out for its rich entertainment, its darkness, and its lurid pleasures. Its vividly drawn panels, moody colors and lush imagery make its popularity well-deserved, if disproportionate.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Genre
Imagery
Lush
Moody
Superhero
Disproportionate
Drawn
Stands
Vividly
Watchmen
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Most climate debates have focused on cutting the use of fossil fuels. But besides a few high-profile scuffles over fuel extraction in vulnerable wild places like the offshore Arctic, political leaders have ignored fossil fuel production as a necessary piece of climate strategy.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Arctic
Climate
Cutting
Extraction
Focused
Fossil Fuel
Fuel
High Profile
Ignored
Offshore
Political Leaders
Strategy
Besides
Wild
Debates
Fossil
Piece
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About half of all potential future global warming emissions from United States fossil fuels lie in oil, gas and coal buried beneath our public lands, controlled by the federal government and owned by the American people - and not yet leased to private industry for fuel extraction.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Buried
Coal
Controlled
Emissions
Extraction
Federal Government
Fuel
Gas
Global Warming
Oil
Public Lands
American People
Beneath
Fossil
Fossil Fuels
Lands
Owned
Warming
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The Free Body Culture gave me a gift I might never have received had I refused to play along. It left me with an acute sense of the absurd - one I still cherish - to be there among my fellow apes, awkward and less than half-willing, aiming and missing, leaping, landing and wincing.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Absurd
Awkward
Body
Cherish
Landing
Left
Might
Missing
Acute
Aiming
Free
Among
Ape
Less
Fellow
Gave
Leaping
Received
Refused
Sense
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If Oak Flat were a Christian holy site or, for that matter, Jewish or Muslim, no senator who wished to remain in office would dare to sneak a backdoor deal for its destruction into a spending bill - no matter what mining-company profits or jobs might result. But this is Indian religion.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Christian
Dare
Destruction
Holy
Indian
Office
Site
Sneak
Spending
Jewish
Bill
Senator
Flat
Muslim
Oak
Profits
Remain
Result
Wished
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For almost two centuries, American gray wolves, vilified in fact as well as fiction, were the victims of vicious government extermination programs. By the time the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, only a few hundred of these once-great predators were left in the lower 48 states.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Government
Endangered Species
Endangered Species Act
Extermination
Gray
Hundred
Left
Species
States
Two
Vicious
Act
Almost
Only
By The Time
Centuries
Endangered
Fact
Few
In Fact
Programs
Lower
Well
Passed
Predators
Victims
Vilified
Wolves
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I've seen a few wild grizzly bears, mostly in Alaska and British Columbia, and always from a distance. But each grizzly I've caught sight of was as fearsome and sublime as the last. You never get used to their raw power and massive bodies, or the mysterious intelligence in their dark, close-set eyes.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Alaska
Bears
British
British Columbia
Caught
Columbia
Dark
Distance
Massive
Mysterious
Sight
Sublime
Bodies
Wild
Mostly
Raw
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Without even knowing why, we believe that to learn how to be human - which we have many years to do, for human beings have longer childhoods than any other species, a feature that to biologists and philosophers alike is one of our race's distinguishing characteristics - children must be surrounded by animal imagery.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Animal
Characteristics
Imagery
Species
Alike
Biologists
Childhoods
Distinguishing
Feature
Philosophers
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I advise, if you're stymied by a passage or paragraph or plot point - whether it's for an assignment from the outside world or one that comes only from within - get up from wherever you're sitting, walk outdoors, and do nothing but look at the sky for five minutes. Just stare at that thing. Then execute a small bow and go back in.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Advise
Outside World
Paragraph
Plot
Sky
Assignment
Bow
Execute
Walk Look World
Outdoors
Passage
Stare
Wherever
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Indeed, the hype around 'Watchmen' is its curse. If you want to enjoy the comic for what it is, ignore the attributions of literariness and the novelistic pretensions with which some critics have imbued it. This isn't high culture, and it doesn't pretend to be. It's good, juicy pulp fiction with a little nuclear apocalypse thrown in.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Apocalypse
Critics
Curse
Hype
Juicy
Nuclear
Pulp
Thrown
Pretend
Ignore
Indeed
Pulp Fiction
Watchmen
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The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or less. Did most people want a house of living things at night, to know that in the dark around them other warm bodies slept? Such a house could even be the whole world.
Lydia Millet / Novelist
Home
Dog
Sleep
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