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
“It was late afternoon. This time tomorrow he would be somewhere on a good graveled road, driving his car past things that happened to people, quicker than their happening.
("Death of a Traveling Salesman")”
― Eudora Welty, quote from The Collected Stories
“As if it were Injustice to sell dearer than we buy; or to give more to a man than he merits. The value of all things contracted for, is measured by the Appetite of the Contractors: and therefore the just value, is that which they be contented to give.”
― Thomas Hobbes, quote from Leviathan
“Reality is the page. Life is the word.”
― David Mitchell, quote from number9dream
“I talked a lot of shit, but truth be told, it was more for my ears than anyone else’s. Madoc was designer. I was Target. He was Godiva. I was Snickers. And as far as he was concerned, he was entitled, and I was the freeloading daughter of the gold- digging whore who had snagged his father.”
― Penelope Douglas, quote from Rival
“You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You'll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. ... I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
― Richard Feynman, quote from What Do You Care What Other People Think?
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