Top 15 Jo Sinclair Quotes

Obstacles which have kept him from complete participation have been dissolved. At this year's ceremony, he can recognize without bitterness what is there for him, as well as what can never be there. Recognizing the inadequacies, he knows he need not be hurt by them.... (Chapter Eleven, p334)

You remember how that word echoed and echoed inside of you all the way home...All the way home, the word said itself in you like a squeezing fist. (Chapter Nine, p299)

"...Do you have anything definite on which to pin your dislike? Or is it a cloak for your dislike of someone else? Or perhaps yourself?" (Chapter Five, p159)

The walls of Saturday moved in on him with a combined pressure of fear and relief, the walls of a confessional. And yet these walls were different, too, pressing as they did ever closer toward him. (Chapter Six, p195)

His own suffering, preceding the similar experiences of his nephews, makes him unwilling to face the idea of progeny. He is afraid of the continued perpetuation of "wasteland," and yet he now tries courageously to discover the truth of that condition, the source of it, perhaps the cure.... (chapter Five, p194)

The word Depression faded from the American air, but in her it would never fade completely, she knew that. (chapter Five, p177)

The big desk was somewhat like a bridge between the doctor and him; at one end the doctor sat, and here at this end he sat, waiting for the moment when he could take a few further awkward steps upon that bridge into understanding, into reasoning. (Chapter Three, p77)

It was Saturday again. Today he was eager to be here. Already he shared with the walls of this office the intimacy of secrets released, the wonderful freedom of shame and pain eased, even the inch of secret, the first few stumbling steps of ease. (Chapter Three, p77)

Even in the secrecy of his own mind, Jake called him "the doctor." He hated the word psychiatrist. He hated it even if Debby did say it was a beautiful word. (first lines, Chapter One)

[He] suddenly leaned and pounded the coffee table. "Must the pattern be so set?" he demanded with bitterness. "A generation doesn't have to repeat itself...leave your poor twisted childhood. End it-don't trap another child in it"...when they had gone, her terrified recognition of what he had said was still there. The Ballroom was icy with the truth of every word. (book 5 chapter 5)

"Don't I have a right to live?" she said. "Can't a woman live even if she is a mother?" (book 5 chapter 5)

He began quietly to tell her the details of Kenny's letter, and as she listened she thought with a kind of tired and comfortable amusement that the ghosts were really catching up with her. Ralph, or her lie to herself, had kept them away for more than a year. But all ghosts had the right, sooner or later, to frighten the people they haunted. (book 5 chapter 2)

It was night in her lovely Ballroom, where a dream was completely safe. (book 4 chapter 3)

The evening became more and more tender, as if [she] were holding the glass bowl of the Ballroom between her palms and watching it fill slowly with all the nostalgia and sadness, the yearning prolonged embraces, of a farewell. (book 3 chapter 11)

...How could anything as delicate as love turn into the harsh accusation of [his] eyes? (book 3 chapter 11)