tumblr share facebook share pinterest share twitter share
share this page



I learned really early on that I had to treat it as if it were a real job. This might be my middle class background - the Irish work ethic, which isn't quite the same as the Protestant work ethic - but still, it's, 'Get a job and show up every day. Be there. And don't complain. Who do you think you are: you're nobody special; go to work.'

I learned really early on that I had to treat it as if it were a real job. This might be my middle class background - the Irish work ethic, which isn't quite the same as the Protestant work ethic - but still, it's, 'Get a job and show up every day. Be there. And don't complain. Who do you think you are: you're nobody special; go to work.'


Alice McDermott  Alice McDermott
Tags: Life  Reading  Place  Know  Wonder  Meet   

  0   website font website font pinterest share twitter share  

Author introduction

Alice McDermott (born June 27, 1953) is an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award[1] and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.[2]

Quotes from the same author


previous quote group                next quote group



My children have gone to Catholic school... Part of their whole education is talking about the inner life and looking at your life, even though you're only 15 or 16 - thinking about your mortality, thinking about the value of your life, thinking about your obligations.

    Alice McDermott  Alice McDermott   
 Tags: Life Education Children School Value
 Topics:
  0   facebook share tumblr share twitter share pinterest share  


What interests me is whatever it is that allows the heart to continue to yearn for something the intelligence knows is impossible to have: a lost love, a shelter from life's blows, the return of a time past, even a connection to the dead.

    Alice McDermott  Alice McDermott   
 Tags: Life Love Time Heart Past Me
 Topics:
  0   facebook share tumblr share twitter share pinterest share  


For immigrant generations especially, family is the first structure, or shelter, for a people who are in exile.

    Alice McDermott  Alice McDermott   
 Tags: Family People Immigrant First Exile
 Topics:
  0   facebook share tumblr share twitter share pinterest share  


I've always believed you go to literature to find the shared human experience, not the categorized human experience.

    Alice McDermott  Alice McDermott   
 Tags: Experience Literature You Find Human
 Topics:
  0   facebook share tumblr share twitter share pinterest share  


I'm very conscious of trying to make something epic out of something small and ordinary.

    Alice McDermott  Alice McDermott   
 Tags: Trying Small Epic Ordinary Something
 Topics:
  0   facebook share tumblr share twitter share pinterest share  


I am trying to cultivate the notion that constantly misplacing one's cell phone is a charming eccentricity... my children aren't buying it.

    Alice McDermott  Alice McDermott   
 Tags: Children I Am Cell Phone Trying
 Topics:
  0   facebook share tumblr share twitter share pinterest share  


I'm a coastal person. I grew up in Long Island and lived in San Diego. I felt landlocked in Pittsburgh. Psychically, it just wasn't the place for me.

    Alice McDermott  Alice McDermott   
 Tags: Me Long Place Island Person Up
 Topics:
  0   facebook share tumblr share twitter share pinterest share  


Those of us who know the transporting wonder of a reading life know that it little matters where we are when we talk about books or meet authors or bemoan the state of publishing because when we read, we are always inside, sheltered in that interior room, that clean, well-lighted, timeless place that is the written word.

    Alice McDermott  Alice McDermott   
 Tags: Life Reading Place Know Wonder Meet
 Topics:
  0   facebook share tumblr share twitter share pinterest share  
previous quote group                next quote group

Related Author


previous author group                next author group




terms of service
contact us
about us
privacy policy

© 2019 quotespace.org All Rights Reserved.