I took comfort, as a kid, in knowing that things had always been as awful and as wonderful as they were now, that the world was always on the edge of total destruction.
Michael ChabonRead
The two dozen commonplace childhood photographs - snowsuit, pony, tennis racket, looming fender of a Dodge - were an inexhaustible source of wonder for him, at her having existed before he met her, and of sadness for his possessing nothing of the ten million minutes of that black-and-white scallop-edged existence save these few proofs.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the bittersweet feelings associated with memories of a loved one before they became part of your life.
Michael Chabon expresses the deep emotional resonance that childhood photographs can carry. They serve as reminders of a loved one's past existence that you were not a part of, creating a mix of wonder at the life they've lived and sadness at the fact that you can only grasp fragments of their experiences through those images. The photographs symbolize a longing for a deeper connection with their history, highlighting the profound nature of relationships and the memories that shape us.
Themes
MemoriesPhotographsChildhoodRelationshipsLonging
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of preserving family memories, this quote beautifully illustrates how photographs connect us to the past.
More from Michael Chabon
All quotes →A story begins with this nebulous feeling that’s hard to get a hold of and you’re testing your feelings and assumptions, testing what you believe. They end up turning into keepsakes and mementos –like amber in which a memory gets trapped.
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I smoked and looked down at the bottom of Pittsburgh for a little while, watching the kids playing tiny baseball, the distant figures of dogs snatching at a little passing car, a miniature housewife on her back porch shaking out a snippet of red rug, and I made a sudden, frightened vow never to become that small, and to devote myself to getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
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It's always thrilling to encounter the sweep of time in a work of fiction in a way that feels authentic and real.
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[My dad] didn't do much apart from the traditional winning of bread. He didn't take me to get my hair cut or my teeth cleaned; he didn't make the appointments. He didn't shop for my clothes. He didn't make my breakfast, lunch, or dinner. My mom did all of those things, and nobody ever told her when she did them that it made her a good mother.
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You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.
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