“Harder still was the pretense her studies demanded: the need to dissemble, to parrot her professors’ orthodoxies, to feign interest in theories that were of no use to her.”
— John Wray
“If you don’t like the place where you find yourself, Waldemar, it pays to remember that you’ll be somewhere else in just a moment. The place itself will be a different place.”
— John Wray
“My mother and I looked at each other then, full in the face, more frankly than we’d done since I was small. I realized with a jolt that I was taller than she was by at least half a foot. When on earth had that happened? The realization made me want to sit down on the stairs and cry. It seemed to signify something terrible about the world: something that couldn’t – or mustn’t- be put into words. And I could see, looking down into her startled, anxious face, that my mother felt exactly the same way.”
— John Wray
“ARE YOU LIVING THE LIFE THAT YOUR MAKER INTENDED? Does your life lack the flavor, the crackle, the intensity you’ve hoped for?Daily, we find ourselves bombarded by a thousand recommendations for extending the duration of our lives – exercise three times weekly! smoke in moderation! exchange sugar for saccharine! – but the truth is that time does not gain value by accruing. Time acquires value by being “spent,” and spent freely. The longest life is not always the best one; in the marjority of cases, just the opposite. If you are, in fact, living the life that your maker intended – it may be time to seek another maker.”
— John Wray
“Only a blind man could have lived through these last years without seeing what was bearing down upon us; so I made myself blind as I could manage. I wanted to believe the worst was behind me, and I found an easy way to make it so. I simply turned my back on what was coming.”
— John Wray