Jonathan Lethem · 271 pages
Rating: (8.6K votes)
“Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“Apologies aren't something you want to get in the habit of practicing in the mirror”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“I jotted the name down mentally on that tattered notepad I call a memory. The pen skipped.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“But the day I can't shrug off a twinge of self-pity, is the day I'm washed up for keeps.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“Nobody said anything while I opened the bag and took out the egg salad sandwich. It was one of those funny moments when a bit of normal human activity embarrasses everybody out of their bluster and hostility, and roles are momentarily laid aside.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“I'd underestimated him. I assumed anyone who started out gut-punching you in an elevator couldn't have all that much else in his arsenal. For instance, I had no idea he could smile, let alone at such an inappropriate time.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“I was playing it existential, and maybe a bit stupid, but it was the only way I knew how to play it.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“The dentist swiveled on his heels and disappeared, leaving me there to massage my jaw back into feeling after its brief, masochistic marriage to the top of my wooden desk.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“He couldn't be more than twenty-five, but he obviously lived enough to have things to regret. He looked like he'd taken a long fall a short time ago. Pieces of the man he'd been were jumbled up with the new guy, the lost soul.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“The clouds were still bunched up in the sky like a gang on a street corner, and it looked to me like they had the sun pretty effectively intimidated.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“Sometimes it’s better not to think in questions, but I can’t seem to get out of the habit.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“How’s it feel to be a worthless jumbo diddly-ass puppetool?”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
Jonathan Lethem
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
Born date February 19, 1964
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“With regard to the work itself, I dare not venture a judgment, for I do not understand it.”
― James Hogg, quote from The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
“When Gould arrives at a party, people who have never seen him before usually take one look at him and edge away. Before the evening is over, however, a few of them almost always develop a kind of puzzled respect for him; they get him in a corner, ask him questions, and try to determine what is wrong with him. Gould enjoys this. "When you came over and kissed my hand," a young woman told him one night, "I said to myself, 'what a nice old gentleman.' A minute later I looked around and you were bouncing up and down with your shirt off, imitating a wild Indian. I was shocked. Why do you have to be such an exhibitionist?" "Madam," Gould said, "it is the duty of the bohemian to make a spectacle of himself. If my informality leads you to believe that I'm a rum-dumb, or that I belong in Bellevue, hold fast to that belier, hold fast, hold fast, and show your ignorance.”
― Joseph Mitchell, quote from Up in the Old Hotel
“[We] stared at each other. It was intensely surreal. Four people in a country kitchen, plotting bloody magic. With a psycho, body-snatching murderer stalking us through flocks of birds.”
― Tessa Gratton, quote from Blood Magic
“Hope, however, isn't all that's needed to achieve change. Hope is a hand extended, but two hands are required to be pulled out of this deep hole. The second hand was faith...”
― Dean Koontz, quote from One Door Away from Heaven
“No matter what you do—somebody, somewheres, knew that you would.”
― Ami McKay, quote from The Birth House
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