.. In that dilated moment after sunset when the sky holds all the light..
David Wroblewski
No one can say if you are that person who, given good paint, good brushes, and a fine canvas, can produce something better than the factory man. That is, and has always been, beyond the realm of science. You do have the attitude of the dreamer about you. For that reason, I haven't the heart to argue anymore about this - it is a hopeless talk. And for a simple factory man like me, an effort must be abandoned once its hopelessness is exposed. Only the artist perseveres in such circumstances. (193)
effort circumstances perseverance man art science attitude heart reason good dreamer person artist hopelessness simple talk hopeless abandoned realm paint
Just when normal life felt almost possible - when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness (the prismatic spray of light through an icicle; the stillness of a sunrise), some small thing would go awry and veil of optimism was torn away, the barren world revealed. They learned, somehow, to wait those times out. There was no cure, no answer, no reparation. (161)
life order death light meaning stillness world optimism kind small grief times wait normal answer sunrise cure learned thing
It was one thing to live in a world where death stood a distant figure, quite another to hold it in your hands.
death
Anything can happen. But almost always, just normal things happen and people have happy lives.
fate
She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. In that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung had never occurred to him. (223)
happiness grief recovery
So a dog's value came from the training AND the breeding. And by breeding, Edgar supposed he meant both the bloodlines - the particular dogs in their ancestry - and all the information in the file cabinets. Because the files, with their photographs, measurements, notes, charts, cross-references, and scores, told the STORY of the dog - what a MEANT as his father put it. (180)
history animals dogs ancestry
Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happiest accidents- the rest you let float by.
life
Come morning, his memory would be of a night spent watching over them all. And each of them - dog and boy, mother and old man - would feel the same. (142)
protection family animals
That was how it was, sometimes. You put yourself in front of the thing and waited for whatever was going to happen and that was all. It scared you and it didn't matter. You stood and faced it. There was no outwitting anything. When Almondine had been playful, she had been playful in the face of that knowledge, as defiant as before the rabid thing. Sometimes you looked the thing in the eye and it turned away. Sometimes it didn't.
chance life decisions fear
When she walked through the woods (infrequently now) she picked her way along the path, making way for the boy inside to run along before her. It could be hard to choose the time outside over the time within. Almondine from The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
fiction
light sunset sky
She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time. When she'd been young, she'd had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn't understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out the world. The apple tree was still nice to lie near. They peony, for its scent, also fine. When she walked through the woods (infrequently now) she picked her way along the path, making way for the boy inside to run along before her. It could be hard to choose the time outside over the time within.
time
It was one of the many rules in the kennel, rules that didn't always make sense, or even seem important, until some situation drew the lesson out.
rules
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