Jennifer McMahon Quotes

Here she was at eight, with the chemistry set she'd begged for at Christmas. Her father was beside her in this one, showing her a picture of the periodic table, explaining how everything on earth, everything in the universe, even - people, starfish, cement, bicycles, and far-off planets - was made up of a combination of these elements. "Isn't it amazing to think of, Ruthie?" he'd asked. Ruthie had found the idea that we were only a series of neatly constructed puzzle pieces or building blocks vaguely unsettling - even at eight, she wanted there to be more to it than that.

Although in my life the level of loss has never reached the extremes it does in 'The Winter People,' I certainly can identify with being both a daughter longing for her mother and being a mother who is almost scared by the intensity of her love for her daughter.

You can sink a thing deep, weight it down with stones, but eventually, it will surface.

I guess you never know what other people are thinking, do you?

The world was full of dangers now that she was pregnant: mercury in tuna, hot tubs, beer, secondhand smoke, over-the-counter medicine. Not to mention crazy baby-abducting fairy kings.

Some people are made stronger by loss. Others are broken by it.

Beautiful building," Phoebe said. Sam nodded. "Classical Revival," he said. It was yet another display of his seemingly unending knowledge that both made her proud and made her feel very small. Maybe if she had gone to college she would have learned about building styles and understand what Classical Revival meant. They could have intelligent discussions about things like rooflines and columns.

It's not the gun you should be scared of - it's the crazy man with the gun

I think people see what they want to see ... But think about it: if you'd lost someone you love, wouldn't you give almost anything to have the chance to see them again?

No one sees the world like you do, Emma. Creating art is about sharing your own personal vision with the world. Taking something no one else can see and bringing it to life.

Some things, I think, like fairy books and secret doors, are only meant to be found by children.

All great heroes have a flaw. It's one of the things that makes them heroes.

Poetry taught me a great deal about language and images, but when it came to plotting, I was stumped. It's been very much a learn-by-doing thing for me.

I have a pretty open mind about supernatural stuff - I do believe that there's more to this world than what meets the eye.

My mother taught me to believe in ghosts: to use a Ouija board, have seances, and leave little offerings out for those who have passed.

I've lived here ... my whole life. It's where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, they'll find the remains of a plush toy: a gray terrier named Toto I buried after the accident.

Reggie smiled. 'You haven't changed at all.' Tara took another pile of clothing from her bag and gave Reggie a sly grin from over the top of it. 'Do any of us really?

If there was a way to bring someone back, would you do it, no matter what the consequences might be? I know that for me, my logical mind says, 'Of course not!' But the truth is, when you lose someone who is so close to you, it's as if they are a part of you; there's always one more thing to say, one more moment you wish you'd had.

How can you dream if you don't have a soul?

And, as Rhonda told the story, she thought: this is how the past gets passed down. This is how memories are made. Half-invented, embellished, given a touch of whimsy.

Madness is always a wonderful excuse, don't you think? For doing terrible things to other people.

And, as in all fairy tales, there was bloodshed, there was loss.

Marriage is full of such cut-and-dry arrangements, Rhonda thought,then felt that small ache she sometimes got at the back of her skull-the one that told her she might be alone forever, not a fate that she chose but rather a fate that seemed to have been chosen for her.

Reggie's earliest memory of her mother began with her mother balancing an egg on its end and ended with Reggie losing her left ear.

Phoebe realized how very wrong she'd been about this house, this family. It was far darker, more dangerous than the places she'd grown up in. In the dingy little apartments her mother rented, everything was out in the open. Their lives were dirty and squalid, but they didn't pretend to be anything else. Here, things seemed so normal, so perfect, but it was all a deception.

She was his great adventure; his love for her had taken him places he'd never dreamed of going.

The attic smelled like dust and mice. Piper was sure she could hear faint scuttling sounds off in the shadows, feel beady eyes upon her. She hoped it was only mice and not something larger, something more dangerous.
Was it more than rustling?
Was that faint breathing she heard coming from the darkest corner, the place where no light touched?

I graduated with a B.A. from Goddard College in 1991 and then studied poetry for a year in the M.F.A. in Writing Program at Vermont College.

I think of setting as almost a character of its own, influencing the other characters in ways they're not even aware of. So much of the success of a good ghost story rides on creating a creepy atmosphere; details of the landscape itself can help create a sense of dread.

There are angels walking among us.

She places the orders for cases of frozen meat, huge cans of wax beans. She makes sure they stay

I wrote my first short story in third grade.

My grandmother was a psychiatrist and had shelves full of medical books - I was constantly sneaking looks at some of those. I was fascinated by the descriptions of illnesses and diseases.

I have a friend who calls me the queen of the nightmares because I've always had really bad nightmares. I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, so I'll wake up in the night from a bad dream, and my heart's pounding, and I'm really scared, but I write it down, and sometimes I get ideas for books that way.

Tracer was a good guy, but Ruthie didn't understand how one individual could smoke the amount of pot he did and still function.

I believed then - in a deep, easy way that is impossible for me as an adult - that there was more to this world than meets the eye. Trees had spirits; the wind spoke. If you followed a toad or a raven deep into the heart of the forest, they were sure to lead you to something magical.

I've never done a sequel - so far, there have been too many new stories and characters calling my name.

I absolutely love writing about the things that scare me, the things that keep me up at night. I don't quite know why. Perhaps because so many things do scare me, and this is my subconscious way of trying to exercise some control over things that go bump in the night!

What if things happened to you - special, magic things - because you'd been preparing for them?

I do believe in ghosts, or at least in some kind of persistent spiritual echoes of the past in certain places.

If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?

And deep down, she felt like maybe she didn't deserve it-that she belonged with the petty thieves and guys who drank Pabst Blue Ribbon for breakfast

And how that lady Suz was all wrong: art is not all about chaos, about taking things apart. True art, Emma will tell them, is about finding a way to make what's broken whole.

All my life, I had this idea that if I could unravel the mystery that was my mother, then I could help save her. But it didn't really work. We were close, but she struggled with mental illness and alcoholism, and it was rough at times.

She closed her eyes. Said the four most comforting words she knew: "Once upon a time."
An incantation.

You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly.

Sometimes a butterfly is not just a butterfly. This is what Oma taught me. You know the worst thing I learned from her? You can be a monster and not even know you are one. They look like us. They think they are us. But really, they've got a monster hiding inside.

I was born in 1968 and grew up in my grandmother's house in suburban Connecticut, where I was convinced a ghost named Virgil lived in the attic.

Think of me. Remember me. Love me.

Oh my God! Sam said again, his voice shaking. I've given birth to something inhuman, Phoebe thought. A lamprey with row after row of teeth.

The thing that drew them to her was the thing that had made all of them come to Sexton in the first place: they were all outsiders, people on the fringe. And no one, it seemed, understood this better than Suz. She turned her difference into a source of power, power that radiated from her, humming, a live thing that sent sparks out to anyone who listened.

I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same.

Tara grinned. "Funny how things work out,