We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!

- Alice Mcdermott

My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly…

- Alice Mcdermott

We are surrounded by story.

- Alice Mcdermott

Heightism is the last unchecked prejudice.

- Alice Mcdermott

Guilt is glorious when it's well earned.

- Alice Mcdermott

Fiction that intends to be something other than entertainment has a certain obligation, I think, to convince the reader, every time, that what is to …

- Alice Mcdermott

In the reading and writing life, delight, for me, is where the mystery lies. Easy enough to figure out how scenes of violence or tragedy or titillati…

- Alice Mcdermott

When I'm not writing, I can't make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some order, and writing fiction is the only way…

- Alice Mcdermott

My parents were both first-generation Irish Catholics raised in Brooklyn. But it was more for me - it was that women of that generation were even les…

- Alice Mcdermott