1
My parents...were people running from the past, who didn't look back at much if they could help it, and whose whole life always lay somewhere in the offing.Richard Ford
2
Loneliness, I've read, is like being in a long line, waiting to reach the front where it's promised something good will happen. Only the line never moves, and other people are always coming in ahead of you, and the front, the place where you want to be, is always farther and farther away until you no longer believe it has anything to offer you.Richard Ford
3
She ordered a martini and encouraged me to, but said she couldn't drink it with her medication. She just liked seeing it in front of her, like the old days, all set to do its little magic.Richard Ford
4
I'm intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.Richard Ford
5
It was as if they'd discovered something that had once been there but had gotten hidden or misunderstood or forgotten over time, and they were charmed by it once more, and by one another. Which seems only right and expectable for married people. They caught a glimpse of the person they fell in love with, and who sustained life. For some, that vision must never dim - as is true of me. But it was odd that our parents should catch their glimpse, and have frustration, anxiety and worry pass away like clouds dispersing after a storm, refind their best selves, but for that glimpse to happen just before landing our family in ruin.Richard Ford
6
The longer they stayed on, and the better they knew each other, the better she at least could see their mistake, and the more misguided their lives became–like a long proof in mathematics in which the first calculation is wrong, following which all other calculations move you further away from how things were when they made sense.Richard Ford
7
He was like my father. They each wanted me to be their audience, to hear the things they needed to express.Richard Ford
8
In their faces--plenty of them were handsome, but ruined-- I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.Richard Ford