Gaige Deathtrap Quotes

It goes without saying that before its culture and literature can continue to evolve, Latvia first must endure the political comedy of creating a stable, functioning and unthreatened democracy. ~ Amity Gaige

My mother was born in Latvia. She and most of her family fled from the capital city of Riga in 1944 with the final approach of the Soviet army. ~ Amity Gaige

It's dangerous to accept crisis as your baseline. It gets harder and harder to see the anti-crises that are so requisite to happiness: the quiet times, the crucial pauses - like those in a poem. ~ Amity Gaige

I think a writer is a describer. She describes society and human nature as she sees it. She has to be both typical of that society and alone within it. ~ Amity Gaige

Be happy. Decide to be happy. If you want to be happy, be happy! No one cares if you're happy or not, so why wait for permission? And did it really matter if you had been deeply unhappy in your past? Who but you remembered that? ~ Amity Gaige

I certainly want people to like my writing, but I know that if I write with the intention of trying to please people, the writing will not be good because it will not be authentic. So, ironically, I have to be willing to write something strange or unlovable in order to write anything truly good. ~ Amity Gaige

There would be times when I got so much work that I didn't have time to write. School interfered with writing more than writing with school. ~ Amity Gaige

Oh, I'm a pretty bad poet. This has been corroborated by others. ~ Amity Gaige

Edan Lepucki sets her debut novel, 'California,' somewhere in the 2060s. The nearness of this era helps make her vision both more discomfiting and more credible. ~ Amity Gaige

Don't let anyone tell you there's only one way to write. ~ Amity Gaige

I'm not "depressed," she said. Besides, I hate that word. OK, what should we call it? She fluffed the pillow behind her back, indignant. I'm very faithful to my problems. ~ Amity Gaige

Childhood is supposed to be happy, and if you can't remember yours with any happiness, what hope have you later, when life starts handing you fresh grief? ~ Amity Gaige

He's probably used to women throwing themselves at him or curling around his massive frame like a sloth in its favorite tree.
I'm closer to a sloth than I am a stripper. Give me a cozy pair of fuzzy pajamas or a onesie instead of a thong and deathtrap platform heels any night of the week. If I had to choose a vice, it would be sloth. Not lust.
Unless the lusting is after cake.
Or Ryan Reynolds.
Or Ryan Reynolds with cake. ~ Daisy Prescott

I think marriage and family keeps being written about because that's where we keep our reputations with ourselves - I mean, we can't quite slip the truths we reveal about ourselves at home. ~ Amity Gaige

Even if Zuma was to develop the authoritarian impulses of a Mugabe, he would be checked - not least by his own party, which set a continental precedent by ousting Thabo Mbeki in 2007, after it felt he had outstayed his welcome by seeking a third term as party president. The ANC appears to have set itself against that deathtrap of African democracy: the ruler for life. ~ Mark Gevisser

I think I have a very American desire and willingness to divulge everything. I would divulge more if I didn't know it wasn't smart. ~ Amity Gaige

Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir! ~ Amity Gaige

Until I sailed, I never would have known that children could be so brave. Which is not to say they did not whine at sea, that they did not cry at the worst times, or need their crusts cut just so, but as it turned out, they had a deep capacity for witness. In a way that I could not, they became the sea, they became the swamp. Their experience was total, without footnote. That day in the swamp, I felt unaccountably happy for them, and for myself as a child, because I knew that I must have been that way once too. I remembered the loss of childhood too well. But I often forgot the long years it was mine. ~ Amity Gaige

Suddenly, he wanted some credit for it. He wanted someone to thank him for not crapping on the institution of love. He wanted someone to thank him for not being yet another dilettante. He wanted someone to thank him for quitting poetry. He wanted some great poet to thank him for quitting poetry instead of desecrating it with his amateurishness. He wanted some unborn child to thank him for not conceiving her and not leaving her a hope chest full of mawkish villanelles. He wanted some sort of organization of martyrs to give him an award. He wanted to be decorated for not putting up a fuss. He wanted to be the president of forgettable people. He wanted there to be a competition for the least competitive person, and he wanted to win that competition. He wanted some sort of badge or outfit or medal or key or hat. He wanted to be asked to stand. He wanted to be considered. He wanted to be considered in earnest before being ignored. He wanted all the insane and beautiful and passionate people in the world to take one moment of silence in gratitude for the ones who had ceded them the stage-- he, the unread poet, the sacrifice, the schoolteacher-- he wanted one goddamned moment of appreciation. ~ Amity Gaige

Reading while I'm writing ideally inspires my competitive side. When I read great writers, I want to be a better writer. ~ Amity Gaige

I researched children's rights, divorce law, and parental kidnapping. Millions of children and parents are touched by the inadequacy of the legal system to deal with the human heart. ~ Amity Gaige

The road to powerful magical items is paved with good intentions and hideous deathtraps. ~ Jeff Mach

I often heard Latvians compare Russia and America. Latvians find both countries and their leaders possessed of the same mysterious confidence. ~ Amity Gaige

When you feel the need to moan and groan, laugh with woeful recognition and eat flaky pastries. If you hear yourself taking the art of complaining a little too seriously, ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish, exactly. ~ Amity Gaige

Amity Gaige has written a flawless book. It does not contain a single false note. Playful and inventive, SCHRODER movingly depicts the ways we confound our own hearts
how even with the best intentions, we fail to love those closest to us as well as we wish we could. Eric Schroder should take his place among the most charismatic and memorable characters in contemporary fiction, and Amity Gaige her place among the most talented and impressive writers working today. ~ David Bezmozgis

Parenthood is a psychic sweat lodge: enter into it only if you are ready to have your own secreted toxins running into your eyes. Few people are prepared for its power - women or men. ~ Amity Gaige

Everyone started to file toward the door, crowding each other in their attempt to get the hell out of this flying deathtrap. I stood and waited for my turn, hefting my purse over my shoulder, and turned my cell phone back on. The second it lit up and I was able, I shot out a text.
Landed. Getting off now.
Romeo's response was instant, and I smiled.
I'm waiting. ~ Cambria Hebert

I was born on an even keel. Family lore says I never cried, even at birth. I felt at ease on earth, in the right place. And like many children, I took comfort in life's regularity: Every few days it rained, the school bus came and went, and my parents were rooted in their union. ~ Amity Gaige

Reading 'Blood Will Out,' one begins to understand how so many people were duped by Clark Rockefeller. All the imposter needs is some kind of initial agreement that he is who he says he is; thereafter, consensus builds via a network of human relationships. ~ Amity Gaige

I do think, in general, children are so perceptive, and they watch and they get so much, and that's wonderful. And it's also difficult for them because they see so much, but they don't understand. ~ Amity Gaige

I think novels are profoundly autobiographical. If writers deny that, they are lying. Or if it's really true, then I think it's a mistake. ~ Amity Gaige

For several years before I began 'The Folded World,' I worked at an urban college campus and had a job in a tutoring center, and people would come into the tutoring center, and for some reason, they just kept telling me their life stories. ~ Amity Gaige

I loved Madeleine L'Engle as a child - 'A Wrinkle in Time.' ~ Amity Gaige