I wrote a novel in my early twenties; I won a high school prize - my short story got published, and I got 50 dollars, which was a huge deal. Sue Miller More Quotes by Sue Miller More Quotes From Sue Miller Kids need to see that Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to us. And they need to know it can happen to them. Sue Miller kids needs jesus There is something truly restorative, finally comforting, in coming to the end of an illusion - a false hope. Sue Miller illusion serious comforting But pain may be a gift to us. Remember, after all, that pain is one of the ways we register in memory the things that vanish, that are taken away. We fix them in our minds forever by yearning, by pain, by crying out. Pain, the pain that seems unbearable at the time, is memory's first imprinting step, the cornerstone of the temple we erect inside us in memory of the dead. Pain is part of memory, and memory is a God-given gift. Sue Miller pain taken memories It seems we need someone to know us as we are - with all we have done - and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone's sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please. Sue Miller forgiving sight needs I suppose in our contemporary lives, our cumulative e-mails might constitute a kind of diary: that informal, moment-by-moment description of life as it goes by. . As I think of those notes now - what I wrote, what I said - it seems to me they danced across the surface just as my grandmother's diaries did - Anais Nin she wasn't, and I wasn't, either. Who is? Not even Anais Nin. Sue Miller grandmother diaries thinking I felt the kind of desperation, I think, that cancels the possibility of empathy...that makes you unkind. Sue Miller empathy kind thinking But perhaps this is all to the good. Perhaps it’s best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself, to put at risk everything that’s dear to you. Who reminds you of the distances we have to bridge to begin to know anything about one another. Who reminds you that what seems to be—even about yourself—may not be. That like him, you need to be forgiven. Sue Miller distance risk bridges And what if we’d been utterly open? Made jokes about the first wife? What if we’d been that kind of family? Well, I would have been different, surely. But not because I knew the secret. For it wasn’t the secret—the secret that wasn’t a secret anyway—that led to the austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies. Sue Miller wife silence lying And I was remembering that time in our lives together, the time of those ritual walks. I was remembering the way it feels at just that moment when you begin to turn, when you’re poised exactly between the things in life you want to do and those you need to do, and it seems for a few blessed seconds that they are all going to be the same. Sue Miller things-in-life blessed together Loss brings pain. Yes. But pain triggers memory. And memory is a kind of new birth, within each of us. And it is that new birth after long pain, that resurrection - in memory - that, to our surprise, perhaps, comforts us. Sue Miller pain loss memories I always write my first draft in longhand, in lined notebooks. I move around the house, sitting where I like, and watch the words spool out in front of me, actually taking a lot of pleasure in the way they look in my strange handwriting on the page. Sue Miller words look me way Everything I've written I see in a very precise way and I hear in my inner ear. Sue Miller i-see everything see way I write all over the house. Because I write in longhand, I can go anywhere I want... I have some notebooks here and there, and then I type it in and pull it out, and I do the revisions all over the place. Sue Miller place go i-can house I try to work in the mornings. Usually, I write in my pajamas and slowly assemble myself. I don't get organized and sit down and get dressed. I do the laundry. I drift in and out of writing. Sue Miller down myself work writing I think I'm less disciplined than a lot of other people, I'm afraid, but on the other hand, I've written a lot of books. Sue Miller books afraid think people There are things I read doing research, and there are certain books and writers I just love to read. There are books of Brian Morten's that I love, for instance. There's a wonderful book by an Australian writer named Helen Garner called 'The Children's Bach,' and I just love the way she uses language in it. Sue Miller research love book children 'Jane Eyre' must have been something I read six or seven times as an early adolescent. And 'Kristin Lavransdatter,' and 'Lorna Doone' when I was younger. My parents had a pretty rich library, no jackets on any of the books, so no descriptions. You just pulled something off the shelf and started to read it. Sue Miller parents you library rich People are always thinking that I'm the main character in my books, but each one has been different, and sometimes they've been men. Sue Miller character men people thinking I was struck after 9/11 by what seemed the assumption that everyone bereaved by that event was suffering the same thing. I wanted to explore how individual grief is, how complicated, how colored by the complexity of the mourner's relationship with the person who's died. Sue Miller person grief suffering relationship My writing life is always a bit disorganized. It's hard for me to get going, but sometimes, once I begin, I go like the wind. Sue Miller me wind sometimes life
