89 quotes found
Writer · American
American writer
“There were two optionscall the foul or don'tand either way, he would lose, but there was a thrill here in this moment when actual combat might have replaced the shadowboxing he'd been doing for mon...”
“He wanted to flee in shame, to the kitchenette, to the next room, to the fire escapes and rooftops and the places where the city ended.”
“Even the kids, behind the slice of streetscape floating in the glass, had mastered the art of pretending not to see.”
“I remember reading 'The Hobbit' on a car trip from Ohio to Mississippi and getting out at a rest-stop in Mississippi and feeling jet-lagged at my return from Middle-earth.”
“He was a priest now, pagan, half-naked in the night, performing obscure rites of interment. Or he was the lead player in his own novel, or in one of those new arcade games William loved, compelled ...”
“Despite which, Charlie seems doomed to stumble around in the dark, clutching pieces of a puzzle he still can't see.”
“Good artists are always crazy, one way or another.”
“Actual artists are like mythological creatures,' she heard herself opine. 'You hear about them, but a sighting's pretty rare.”
“All these threads, like the ley-lines he'd read about in his Time-Life history books, converging on the Cicciaro girl, who lay there unaware, a glass-coffined beauty whose kingdom was in ruins.”
“The second this interminable wait ended, it would all start to fall away into the past, to become unreal.”
“Even before the letter he'd been divided: one part of him swanning with Jay Gatsby around an imaginary Gotham; the other part stolid and earthbound, nose to the deep fryer, in the stifling, sizzlin...”
“There's nothing in this courtyard, after all, that wasn't here in 1977; maybe it's not this year but that one, and everything that follows is still to come ... For if the evidence points to anythin...”
“This isnt Soviet Russia. This is America were talking about. For Gods sake, this is New York City.”
“Did you really think I'd steer you wrong?" Then William pointed to the wide-open country beyond the next ridge. "New York's that way. My compass is unerring.”
“How could anarchy be any worse for the general welfare than this? I say let the city go bankrupt, the buildings fall, let grass take over Fifth Avenue. Let birds nest in storefronts, whales swim up...”
“You're hung up on something that's never going to love you back.”
“College stirred in her a certain contempt for virtues like kindness and persistence. She would have appeared to have been a kind and persistent person herself, but a steady diet of Antonioni films ...”
“No one, in the end, made it out of this life alive.”
“I respect Billy Joel, but I'm not a guy who's gonna sit down and listen to the entire 'Essential Billy Joel.'”
“Three’s all you need to change the world. Look at the Bolsheviks, or the Jimi Hendrix Experience.”
