Erens Quotes

They grabbed a woman held in Death's grasp and shook and shook and forced Death to drop her ~ Pamela Erens

How naive Lore had been, despite being the daughter of a father no one spoke of, despite the strange, incomplete conversations at her mother's deathbed; how again and again she was caught up short by the discovery that other people had stories they didn't tell, or told stories that weren't entirely true. How mostly you got odd chunks torn from the whole, impossible truly to understand in their damaged form. ~ Pamela Erens

Writers know all the good reasons for subjecting their work to a sharp trim. Early drafts are notorious for repetition, indirection and overdevelopment of the trivial. ~ Pamela Erens

But the moan this time is not simply a moan of will and pain but a call into the emptiness: Is anyone there? There is a blackness spreading into her vision and she feels herself spinning in an unlit sky. Empty, empty, her moan cries. The moan goes on, spiraling deeper into space, and at the end of it Lore falls directly into sleep, with no sense of transition, into a dream of gray waters, of swimming with weary arms and trying to spy the shore. ~ Pamela Erens

Children were in fact ferocious little animals, sharp and canny and hurt and eager to inflict hurt themselves, who were trying to get what they needed in life. ~ Pamela Erens

Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed," he said. "And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses."
"Excuses, eh?" Well, if this ain't cynicism, what is?" Erens snorted.
"Yes, excuses," he said, with what Erens thought might just have been a trace of bitterness. "I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're the least important part of the belief. That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place." He looked at Erens. "You've attacked the wrong thing. ~ Iain M. Banks

In my experience, cutting back is the crucial act that allows the vitality, precision and emotional heart of a piece of writing to emerge. ~ Pamela Erens

I like bare as well as lush, probably better. What speaks to me most is close to the ground: the shrubs and vines, rather than the great elms, oaks, and maples. The understory, as botanists call it…It is the shrubs that allow the park to survive. ~ Pamela Erens

But she let him stay that one time. Fatigue from fighting him, maybe. Maybe the sense of loneliness when the man's body withdrew so quickly, and you felt the cold between your legs and the abrupt sense of separateness again. ~ Pamela Erens

Her mother's quiet disapproval and withdrawal was a death in itself, and Franckline's despair at it was transmitted, she was sure of it, to the child. She transgressed twice, first by making the child, then by giving it her despair, the despair that left it unable to live. ~ Pamela Erens