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

“have to. You don’t understand, and it’s okay. I don’t want you to worry about me.” His carefree tone made her panic and stutter out stupid half-ass words. “Bye, Rosie,” he said, regretfully. “You don’t need to do this!” she gasped, finally finding her voice. “Don’t you dare hang up, dammit! I mean it.” After many seconds of nothing, he whispered a perplexed, “Or what?” She shot out of her chair. “Or … I will be so very angry at you! And hurt!” she knew she was crossing every line possible, but her gut said he was dead serious—stupid pun unintended. ”
― Mason Sabre, quote from Cuts Like An Angel


“...'I've never told you this, but when you were in your teens one of your teachers called us. He said you'd been fighting in the playground again. With two of the boys from the grade above, but this time it hadn't turned out so well--they'd had to send you to the hospital to have your lip sewn and a tooth taken out. I stopped your allowance, remember? Anyway, Øystein told me about the fight later. You flew at them because they'd filled Tresko's knapsack with water from the school fountain. If I remember correctly, you didn't even like Tresko much. Øystein said the reason you'd been hurt so badly was that you didn't give in. You got up time after time and in the end you were bleeding so much that the big boys became alarmed and went on their way.'
Olav Hole laughed quietly. 'I didn't think I could tell you that at the time--it would only have been asking for more fights--but I was so proud I could have wept. You were brave, Harry. You were scared of the dark, but that didn't stop you going there.'...”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Leopard


“Please, I know nothing of the world, except my father is lost in it.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“Apuesto a que te dijo que fue "el destino el que te trajo aquí", ¿verdad? Creen que son peones en manos de seres superiores, cuando en realidad son peones en manos de sus propias subconscientes, que se han desbocado.”
― Philip K. Dick, quote from Confessions of a Crap Artist


“Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, quote from Leonardo's Notebooks


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