Literary Birthday – 16 September – Elizabeth McCracken

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth McCracken, born 16 September 1966.

Six Quotes

1. Books remember all the things you cannot contain.
2. Library books were, I suddenly realised, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.
3. I believe marriage is a spectator sport.
4. 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.
5. Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.
6. The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.

Elizabeth McCracken is an American writer. She is the author of The Giant’s House and An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.

Photograph

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photo_of_Elizabeth_McCracken.jpg

Ogcricket, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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