Stacey D'Erasmo Quotes

Powerful Stacey D'Erasmo for Daily Growth

About Stacey D'Erasmo

Stacey D'Erasmo is an accomplished American novelist, essayist, and short-story writer, renowned for her introspective narratives that explore the complexities of human relationships and personal identity. Born in 1962 in New York City, D'Erasmo was raised in a creative household where literature and art were valued. Her parents, both educators, instilled in her a deep appreciation for storytelling and the written word. After completing her Bachelor of Arts in English at Barnard College in 1984, D'Erasmo went on to earn her Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University's School of the Arts in 1986. Her literary journey began in earnest with the publication of her debut novel, "The Invisible Studio" (1995), which garnered critical acclaim for its portrayal of a lesbian artist navigating love, ambition, and artistic freedom. In 2001, D'Erasmo published "A Severe Mercy," a novel inspired by the true story of Sheldon and Davy Van Auken, a Christian couple who faced adversity in their relationship due to Davy's terminal illness. The book showcases D'Erasmo's ability to capture profound emotional depth and spiritual exploration. Her most recent work is the critically acclaimed novel "Wonderland" (2015), which follows a group of characters connected through a New York City brownstone, exploring themes of family, friendship, loss, and renewal. D'Erasmo's writing often reflects her personal experiences, making her an essential voice in contemporary American literature. Throughout her career, Stacey D'Erasmo has been recognized for her literary achievements, including being named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1998 and a Dorothea Lasky Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in 2010. Her contributions to the world of literature continue to inspire readers and writers alike with their nuanced characters, rich storytelling, and insightful exploration of the human condition.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"The heart is a muscle that can break as easily as it can mend."

This quote suggests that, much like a physical muscle, the heart - symbolizing emotions, love, and compassion - is vulnerable to both strength and fragility. Just as a muscle can heal after injury, the heart too can mend following emotional pain or trauma. However, it also implies that the heart is equally susceptible to experiencing intense emotional strain, which can lead to feelings of hurt or brokenness. The quote serves as a reminder that while our hearts are resilient, they require care and nurturing to heal from emotional wounds.


"To be alone, and not to feel lonely, that was a rare gift."

This quote suggests a profound understanding of solitude as more than just physical isolation, but rather a state of contentment and peace. It implies that some individuals possess an ability to find comfort and fulfillment in their own company, without the need for external validation or interaction. The phrase "rare gift" emphasizes that this trait is not common, making it valuable and admirable.


"We are never quite ourselves in the presence of the people we love the most."

This quote suggests that our true selves can be somewhat hidden or altered when we're around those we deeply care for, often due to a desire to protect them from any perceived flaws or vulnerabilities, or simply because we want to present our best selves. The intimacy of close relationships can create a unique dynamic where authenticity and self-expression can sometimes be influenced by emotions like love, fear, or the need for approval. It's a reminder that understanding and accepting the complexities of ourselves and others is essential in fostering genuine connections.


"Time changes us all. Time is a killer. Time heals."

This quote by Stacey D'Erasmo suggests that the passage of time has profound effects on everyone, it's destructive as well as reparative. Time, in its constant march, alters our identities and experiences, often leading to transformation (Time changes us all). However, this change can be painful or even fatal, symbolized by the phrase "Time is a killer" (the wear and tear of life, loss, and change). On the other hand, time can also mend wounds and heal hurts. The quote "Time heals" highlights that given enough time, emotional scars from past events can fade, allowing for renewal and growth (time heals). Ultimately, D'Erasmo reminds us that we must navigate through life's changes, endure the hardships, and have faith in the healing power of time.


"I think I've learned something about the way time works. How it slips through your fingers when you're not looking, and how you can never get back what has gone before."

This quote suggests that time is a fleeting resource, often slipping away unnoticed. It also highlights our inability to recapture or restore moments that have already passed. The message underscores the importance of mindfulness and cherishing every moment, as they are irreplaceable.


'The Girls' tells the story of Rose and Ruby Darlen, who are not only literally but spiritually attached for eternity. Born joined at the head in 1974 to a feckless teenage mother who abandons them, and reared by a delightfully open-minded adoptive couple, the Darlen girls are darling girls, indeed.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Head, Couple, Teenage, Darling

Shelley Jackson's 'Half Life' is the textual equivalent of an installation, a multivocal, polymorphous, dialogic, dystopian satire wrapped around a murder mystery wrapped around a bildungsroman.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Around, Equivalent, Half, Shelley

There is no such thing as a natural fit between form and content. Seamless elegance would be tantamount to erasure.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Elegance, Natural, Fit, Seamless

I don't know if my faith stems from what I'd call unconditional love, but the energy certainly feels boundless.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Love, Stems, Certainly, Boundless

In each medium - popular music, literature, and visual art, respectively - the woman has broken form, shed a skin, with each phase of her career, whereas the man has returned to ever-deepening iterations of the sound or sentence or imagery with which he began.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Woman, Career, Shed, Respectively

I was influenced by big, strong voices - writers like Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf, Jane Bowles; gay writers like Ed White, Michael Cunningham, Allen Hollinghurst; and contemporary lesbian writers, like Dorothy Allison.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Strong, Big, Allison, None

Writers and musicians are very similar in that the chances of making a life in either field are so infinitesimal. And once you're in, the chances of staying viable are difficult. But there is something incredibly different about performing in front of a live audience, as opposed to sitting at your desk typing.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Musicians, Very, Staying, Chances

What is the distance between here and there, between now and then, between right and wrong? In Greg Baxter's pellucid first novel, 'The Apartment,' it may be simply the length of a day - but a day in which one travels surprisingly far, literally and figuratively.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Distance, Here, Figuratively, Now And Then

You can get anything online, including things that don't even exist. We've invented our own collective unconscious. The normal rules of time and space don't apply. It's held together by some other force than gravity. It's endless. It's like some unimaginably huge, messy novel that's writing itself both with and without us.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Some, Other, Held, Time And Space

As readers, we sense when the game is being played for real and when something else is afoot: pride, showmanship, the pursuit of power, self-aggrandizement, revenge, making money. Not that there's anything wrong with any of that, but I dislike closing a book with the sense that I've been had.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Game, Dislike, Been, Showmanship

One of the many pleasures of 'Versailles' is the way in which it seems to emanate not only from the vexed inner being of Marie Antoinette but from the interstices between what we imagine of her and what she was.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Imagine, Which, Emanate, None

That feeling of being part of a group moving together is very powerful. It feels like it opens up a zone of possibility, a place for another self to form, also a place for a new world to form.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

New, Very, Feels, New World

'The Girls,' by Lori Lansens, is a ballad, a melancholy song of two very strange, enchanted girls who live out their peculiar, ordinary lives in a rural corner of Canada.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Song, Very, Lives, Enchanted

Music is quicksilver, gossamer; careers are measured in butterfly lifetimes.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Music, Measured, Careers, Lifetimes

There are more clocks than ever - clocks on computers, on cell phones, on televisions, on any screen available, telling time to the digital second - but they all seem to matter less.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Digital, More, Telling, Clocks

Prior to the institutionalization of standard time, clocks were set using local meridians or local mean time, and they varied widely.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Standard, Set, Using, Clocks

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Always, Different Places, Nest

As lightly toned by reality as the women on 'Sex and the City,' the bold, soigne characters on 'The L Word' suggest that L is also for limerence, that rapturous state of early love when the entire world is glowing and delectable.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Love, City, Delectable, Sex And The City

You can conclude from the glossy surfaces of 'The L Word' that L stands for latte or Lexus and stop there. Or you can notice that in some of its less flashy moments, the show has staked a claim on Large - as in a larger, denser, more ambivalent imaginary world, populated by imperfect and riveting citizens of all sexual stripes.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Some, Show, Larger, Claim

I'm not a parent, but it seems to me the nature of parenting is contingent, full of unexpected challenges - which is one of the wonderful and amazing things about it.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Nature, Parent, Which, Amazing Things

The deeper changes wrought by the end of a particular outlaw culture: something will come of that ... and it won't be what we expect.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Will, Expect, Outlaw, Wrought

The ambition of 'Ten Thousand Saints,' Eleanor Henderson's debut novel about a group of unambitious lost souls, is beautiful. In nearly 400 pages, Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire and bit of emotional detritus.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Back, About, Nearly, Writes

A performer needs and craves a live audience.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Audience, Performer, Needs, Live Audience

The songs in 'Wonderland' don't have a melodic life for me - I'm not a musical person - but they have an emotional life, an emotional echo perhaps.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Emotional Life, Musical, Wonderland

Royalty mostly seem like members of some anachronistic faith, like the Amish, peculiar in gilded buggies.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Some, Gilded, Mostly, Peculiar

Readers, like writers, are essentially amoral. Arm's length will never do. We want to get closer.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Will, Like, Amoral, Arm

One of the first times that I went into a book store and saw a bunch of my books, my impulse was to put them all under my coat and run away so that no one else could see them, even though, of course, I wanted everyone to see them.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Book, Run, Away, Impulse

The much-lauded visual artist Roni Horn got her Master's in Sculpture from Yale in the Seventies, but in the course of her career she has moved, among other media, from watercolors to photographs to floor-sized installations and mats of poured gold.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Career, Artist, Other, Yale

What interests me are the complexities and contradictions and struggles and joys of messy human beings.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Me, Contradictions, Complexities

Emotional grandeur, rendered in the vernacular, has been Mona Simpson's forte. In her novels, 'Anywhere but Here,' 'The Lost Father' and 'A Regular Guy,' Simpson wrote wide and long and high about the most profound human bonds: parents and children lost each other, found each other, lost each other again, but differently.

- Stacey D'Erasmo

Here, Other, Been, Novels

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