Doug Dorst Quotes

Story is a fragile and ephemeral thing on its own, a thing that is easily effaced or disappeared or destroyed, and it is worth preserving.

He is a man without a past sailing in a strange sea in a world where the stars have come loose in the firmament.

I know the you who's in the margins. I know you're thinking hard about what you want and why– more than some people ever do. I know you can take on a challenge and kick its ass. And I know you've tried harder to understand me than anyone has in a long time.

Better y'not vex y'self on what aint y'vexes. - Malstrom pg 269

What begins at the water shall end there, and what ends there shall once more begin.

Everything you do means something about you.

He is terrified, suddenly, that she will vanish again, that they will continue to age, and likely die, apart.

The feeling, for those seconds, is glorious - it reminds him that he is human, that he is so insignificant as to be utterly free, and he is being guided along gracefully, lovingly, by the hand of Nature - and it frees him, however transiently, from all worry and fear and fury and grief. 'I enjoyed that,' he says aloud, as much to the stars as to the rower.

For one moment, it is more important to take in the spectacular than to worry about the pressing business of staying alive.

Something about her in this moment strikes him as being familiar. The motion of her arm? The shape of her hand? The wrinkle of her upper lip? He does not know. Nor does he have any way to tell whether what he is sensing is a fragment of memory, a fragment of an idea of a memory, or something his mind, desperate for connections, has created on its own.

-It's extremely cool how the words can stay the same but their meaning can change.
-Because the reader changes.
-EXACTLY

-I hate that. I hate that people can't just say what they mean.
-You don't. Not always.
-I never say anything I don't mean. I just avoid saying some things that I do.

FXC arguing that love is what makes us most human - to deny it is to deny an essential part of your humanity.

A person is no more & no less than the Story of his Passions & Deeds.

Long day today,' she says.
'Every day's the same length, sweetie.

They're not terrible people. They just couldn't be who I needed them to be.

We tried to tell him,' Toronto says.
'You made fun of him,' Mazzarella points out.
'That was how we tried to tell him.

I don't trust anyone who wouldn't.

The story you walk into, he has learned, is always more complex than it first appears.

-That's kind of sad.
-I used to think so. Now I think: you're born a certain way. Later you get to decide how much you want to fight/change that. I don't mind being alone.
-You must mind. If you didn't you wouldn't be doing this with me.

Artistic integrity is not a guest whom one may choose not to invite to a gala. She must be the first you invite, the first you seat, the first you serve food and wine, the one who calls the orchestra's tunes, the one who is offered her choice of dance partners throughout the night.

- Maybe VMS is saying that nothing in the world is entirely one way or another.
- Or maybe it's about Sala. She's there, so he's supposed to be
for good or bad.
- I just don't buy that SOT is fundamentally a love story.
- I think you're wrong.

I like to think he's in a better place. And besides, when you get older, you want to have something to believe in.

Find what you love. Then fight like hell when people try to take it away from you.

He has been through too much - too much suffering, too much uncertainty, too much loss, too much trauma - to tolerate not being taken seriously.

- I can't make choices like that without knowing who I am. Without knowing all the implications.
- You can't ever know in advance. Big decisions require faith.

The creation of art requires descent into the dark.

It dawned on him that he really could be a cop if he wanted to, and it dawned on him that he'd had this revelation while eating a donut, and it that wasn't a sign, he didn't know what was.

They speak little; it is as if the air has been churned up with decade's worth of fruitless pursuit and missed connections and thoughts unspoken, and they are waiting quietly for all this matter - these motes of opportunity forgone - to settle around them.

A kindred spirit? Perhaps
if not kindred to the man he is, or was, then to the sort of man he wouldn't mind being.

You can't just whistle and summon sense and order back into your mind. All you can do is button your coat, lace your boots, and trudge through the frigid business of being.

He threads a hook, re-sews his mouth, cuts off the thread-tails with the razor blade. It's a simple task, no more difficult than shaving. He can do it in the dark. He can do it in a thirty-knot wind and seven-foot seas. He can do it in his sleep, and he probably has.
(Margin note in reference to excerpt above:) "Per Dr. B: it's easy to get used to doing things that are harmful to ourselves- do it often enough + it becomes ordinary/habitual- just how you live.

A person is no more & no less than the Story of his Passions & Deeds.

There is the possibility of a happy ending.

He made his choices, over & over again. He's the one who could've said let's be together
none of this matters more than you, than us. And he didn't.