Quote

I am sensible of the velocity of the moments, and entering that part of my head alert to the motion of the world I am aware that life was never perfect, never absolute. This bestows contentment, even a fearlessness.

Harold Brodkey

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Harold Brodkey
Age: 65 †
Born: 1930
Born: October 25
Died: 1996
Died: January 26
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Staunton
Illinois
Aaron Roy Weintraub
Alert
Head
Entering
Perfect
Contentment
Moments
Motion
Part
Sensible
Even
Absolutes
Bestows
Never
Absolute
Velocity
Life
Fearlessness
World
Aware

More quotes by Harold Brodkey

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Nothing I have ever written has been admired as much as the announcement of my death.
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Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.
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Almost the first thing I did when I became ill was to buy a truly good television set.
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I have thousands of opinions still - but that is down from millions - and, as always, I know nothing.
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I can't change the past, and I don't think I would. I don't expect to be understood. I like what I've written, the stories and two novels. If I had to give up what I've written in order to be clear of this disease, I wouldn't do it.
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Memory, so complete and clear or so evasive, has to be ended, has to be put aside, as if one were leaving a chapel and bringing the prayer to an end in one's head.
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Death and I are head to head in a total collision, pure and mutual distaste.
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But death's acquisitive instincts will win.
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Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.
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Often writing is like a struggle to get back to a kind of belated, quite impure virginity.
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My protagonists are my mother's voice and the mind I had when I was thirteen.
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In New York one lives in the moment rather more than Socrates advised, so that at a party or alone in your room it will always be difficult to guess at the long term worth of anything.
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I am startled when people are themselves and are not my thoughts of them.
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You really can’t write unless you read. You have to know what the game is all about.
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Athletes have studied how to leap and how to survive the leap some of the time and return to the ground. They don't always do it well. But they are our philosophers of actual moments and the body and soul in them, and of our maneuvers in our emergencies and longings.
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I'm sixty-two, and it's ecological sense to die while you're still productive, die and clear a space for others, old and young.
Harold Brodkey
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The disparity between what people said life was and what I knew it to be unnerved me at times, but I swore that nothing would ever make me say life should be anything.
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I often thought men stank of rage it is why I preferred women, and homosexuals.
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If you like to read, sometimes it's interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet... Sometimes you can go looking for illumination.
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Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been
Harold Brodkey