Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCrackenis an American author...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
girl unrequited-love boys
I had never wanted to be one of those girls in love with boys who would not have me. Unrequited love - plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing - turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn't want, couldn't use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness. Neither could James. He understood. In such situations, you do one of two things - you either walk away and deny yourself, or you do sneaky things to get what you need. You attend weddings, you go for walks. You say, yes. Yes, you're my best friend, too.
father insisting
My father was right: you could make anybody amazing just by insisting they were.
people answers whole-life
but you can't spend your whole life hoping people will ask you the right questions. you must learn to love and answer the questions they already ask.
grief grieving tragedy
Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.
baby expects express fine losing lost needed pain somehow takes though wrong
When you've lost a baby, everyone around you expects you to be fine once the new baby is born, as though that somehow takes away the pain of losing the first child. I needed to express how wrong that was.
armchair bring certain chairs desk needed useful work worthy writer
I used to be a writer with superstitions worthy of a professional baseball player: I needed a certain desk chair and a certain armchair and a certain desk arrangement, and I could only get really useful work done between 8 P.M. and 3 A.M. Then I started to move, and I couldn't bring my chairs with me.
caps chair chance good people remember rocking saying
There's a good chance that in 40 years, after the floods, people zipping by on scavenged jetpacks with their scavenged baseball caps on backwards, I will be in my rocking chair saying bitterly, 'I remember when 'all right' was two words.'
assumption chipping ghostly holy mary painted ruined vivid
The walls of the Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary were ruined stucco chipping away from the brick underneath, with ghostly frescoes, concrete-filled niches, and one complete, vivid crucifix painted over the altar.
classes earned last
In the last century, I earned my living as a librarian, and I loved it. I'd have to take some classes to get up to speed with 21st-century librarianship.
archie glowing green science screens wrote
In library science school, back in the years of glowing green non-graphical screens and protocols called Archie and Veronica, I wrote Internet documentation.
care unhappiness cures
The cure for unhappiness is happiness, I don't care what anyone says.
sadness looks trouble
You can't out-travel sadness. I travel not to get away from my troubles but to see how they look in front of famous buildings
miscarriage happy-life missing
It's a happy life, but someone is missing. It's a happy life, and someone is missing.
lying waiting imagine
After most deaths, I imagine, the awfulness lies in how everything’s changed….there’s a hole. It’s person-shaped and it follows you everywhere…. For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We’d been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life.