On Friday, after a 25-year-long career as a beloved romance novelist, The Bridges of Madison County author Robert James Waller died in his home at the age of 77. In honor of his memory, I've got 10 Robert James Waller quotes about life and love for you below.
In 1992, Waller published his overnight success of a novel, which he wrote in just 11 days. The Bridges of Madison County tells the story of a four-day-long love affair between an Iowa farmer's Italian wife and a visiting National Geographic photographer. Despite critics who lauded its sentimentality, Bridges spent more than a year on The New York Times Best Seller List, and Oprah Winfrey labelled it her "favorite book of the year."
Waller followed his first novel with several other infidelity-themed romances, including Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend and High Plains Tango. Ten years after he published The Bridges of Madison County, Waller returned to Robert and Francesca's love story with A Thousand Country Roads in 2002. His final book, a work of nonfiction titled The Summer Nights Never End ... Until They Do, was published in 2012.
Following the success of his first works of fiction, Waller stopped giving interviews in 1995, with few exceptions. As Bridges remains his most famous and well-loved book, you'll find that most of the Robert James Waller quotes below come from his debut novel. As always, please feel free to share your favorites with me on Twitter.
1"People mistake shyness and reclusiveness — both of those — for arrogance. It's a convenient label slapped on by those who see only the surface of things and nothing more."
— from Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend
2"Complex things are easy to do. Simplicity's the real challenge."
3"The human heart has a way of making itself large again even after it's been broken into a million pieces."
5"There's not much room left for travelers."
6"God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great system of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years."
7"Find a slice of quiet in the layers of noise, conduct a rain into the noise now and then for some work, take the gold and run like hell back to the quiet place."
— from High Plains Tango
8"We are the choices we make."
9"I don't just take things as given; I try to make them into something that reflects my personal consciousness, my spirit. I try to find the poetry in the image."
10"The old dreams were good dreams; they didn't work out, but I'm glad I had them."
