Quotes from A True Novel

854 pages

Rating: (656 votes)


“But for someone like me, who moved into an entirely different world when still quite young, it’s as if a deep gap divides my past and my present.”
― quote from A True Novel


“Time flew over me, its black wings spread.”
― quote from A True Novel


“I believe that a girl begins life as a doll her mother can dress up as she pleases, a mirror where her mother's fancies are reflected; but as she grows older, her own nature begins to show.”
― quote from A True Novel


“She's still quite fit at ninety, fit enough to chew her food with her own teeth. Apparently she grew up in a house without a bar of soap, let alone tooth powder. Her family didn't have electricity until she started elementary school, and she'd never seen a train until the tracks of the Koumi line were laid in Saku. It's exactly as if she were born in the Edo period. These days, you only have to drive for five minutes to find a sparkling clean convenience store, with bright lights above shelves stocked with everything you could possibly need. Land that used to be fields of mulberry bushes is now crisscrossed by smooth, wide roads lined with video rental stores and fast food restaurants.

I would say O-Hatsu has seen more changes in her lifetime than I have. After all, she lived for most of the century when this country was changing faster than it ever had before. Even so, I have a feeling that the inside of her head has remained much the same as when she was a girl. By "the inside of her head" I mean the way she sees the world around her—the language she uses to make sense of it. In my case, the very way I looked at the world and the words I used to understand it had altogether changed.”
― quote from A True Novel


“IN MICHIGAN IT seemed as if spring would never come; then when it did, all too soon it was summer. One day I realized the cold was loosening its grip, and then overnight, the weather turned hot, with the sun whitening the concrete streets. As if to reward themselves for having endured such a long, harsh winter, everyone walked around wearing as little as they could get away with.”
― quote from A True Novel



“Privately, I felt that living in that privileged environment, where her emotions ran unchecked, had made her oversensitive and unstable.”
― quote from A True Novel


Popular quotes

“But if I knew everything, there would be no wonder, because what I believe in is far more than I know.”
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“It is impossible that there should be demonstration of absolutely everything; [for then] there would be an infinite regress, so that there would still be no demonstration.”
― Aristotle, quote from Metaphysics


“That was the sound of a sneer."

"Was it?" Amused, aroused, he distracted her with a nibble on her bottom lip. "I can never tell the difference. And what sound is this?"

"What sound?"

He drove himself into her, one powerful and deep thrust that ripped a shocked cry from her throat.

"That one." He lowered his head, tasting the heat that rose to her flesh even as her hips arched to meet him. "And that one."

She struggled to get her breath back. "Tolerance," she managed.

"Oh, well, if that's the best we can do." He started to move back. She reared up, wrapped around him.

"I need to practice my tolerance." She skimmed the hair away from his face with her fingers, then fisted her hands. Her lips curved, met his.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Betrayal in Death


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