Peter Hedges

Novelist

1962-07-06

Quotes by Peter Hedges

• In the living room, the consensus among the guests was that Scotty's looks favored his father, but the Judge was quick to disagree: —He doesn't look a thing like me. He looks like an hors d'oeuvre.'Hearing this, Joan thought the following, and pledged it to herself, as both prayer and promise: You will be loved, Scotty Ocean.And while the guests laughed at the Judge's remark, Joan leaned over and softly whispered to her newborn son, 'You will be loved.

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• I stared at her - unable to accept that at one time I was growing inside her. I was once just a couple of cells. My father and my mother were naked something had to be satisfactory about it, because he came inside her and she got pregnant. She, like me, was once a baby in her mother's stomach and so on and so forth and so it goes. So it goes.

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• I left this conversation hours ago, but somehow my mouth is still moving, words are still forming, and none have seemed to offend. Amazing, the mind. My mind, I mean. Not hers.

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• In a cement park across the street is this giant sculpture. It is a giant umbrella frame lying on its side. It's green. Stand under it, during a rainstorm, you'll still get wet - that's why it's art.

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• In a cement park across the street is this giant sculpture. It is a giant umbrella frame lying on its side. It's green. Stand under it, during a rainstorm, you'll still get wet - that's why it's art.

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• I left this conversation hours ago, but somehow my mouth is still moving, words are still forming, and none have seemed to offend. Amazing, the mind. My mind, I mean. Not hers.

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• In the living room, the consensus among the guests was that Scotty's looks favored his father, but the Judge was quick to disagree: —He doesn't look a thing like me. He looks like an hors d'oeuvre.'Hearing this, Joan thought the following, and pledged it to herself, as both prayer and promise: You will be loved, Scotty Ocean.And while the guests laughed at the Judge's remark, Joan leaned over and softly whispered to her newborn son, 'You will be loved.

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• I stared at her - unable to accept that at one time I was growing inside her. I was once just a couple of cells. My father and my mother were naked something had to be satisfactory about it, because he came inside her and she got pregnant. She, like me, was once a baby in her mother's stomach and so on and so forth and so it goes. So it goes.

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• My mother's sobriety - that's when I found the theater, that's when I moved from being a basketball player to being a musician, to being an actor, to then being a writer.

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• Everything good in my life can be traced back to my mother's sobriety. She showed me that broken people can - with the help of others - turn themselves around.

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• I once heard a story, it's probably apocryphal, but I love the notion. That a car had flipped over and the baby was trapped underneath the car and the mother was thrown from the car. Then the mother lifted up the car to pull her child to safety. And I believe that my own strength comes from whom and what I love.

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• I grew up in a very loving but very broken family, and I suppose that's why I'm drawn to telling stories about well-intentioned people who are doing their best - but are not always successful - in figuring out how to maneuver through this complicated, bumpy and broken world.

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