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.”
“Apologies aren't something you want to get in the habit of practicing in the mirror”
“I jotted the name down mentally on that tattered notepad I call a memory. The pen skipped.”
“But the day I can't shrug off a twinge of self-pity, is the day I'm washed up for keeps.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I was playing it existential, and maybe a bit stupid, but it was the only way I knew how to play it.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Sometimes it’s better not to think in questions, but I can’t seem to get out of the habit.”
“How’s it feel to be a worthless jumbo diddly-ass puppetool?”
“Morris was not the type to offer a hug or even hold your hand. But there was something in his quiet indignation at the universe then--and Luke, now--that was just the kind of comfort I needed.
"I'm such a mess," I said. "We're almost off the island and I didn't even ask you where you were going."
He shrugged. "No place. Wherever you are.”
“What do you have to fear? Nothing. Whom do you have to fear? No one. Why? Because whoever has joined forces with God obtains three great privileges: omnipotence without power, intoxication without wine, and life without death.”
“Taking my hand, he rests it over his T-shirt, over his heart. “You hold this in the palm of your hand. You are the only woman who has ever had it, and ever will. You own me, Tru.”
“You are the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all we needed.”
“As this book will show, objectively defined races simply do not exist. Even Arthur Mourant realized that fact nearly fifty years ago, when he wrote: 'Rather does a study of blood groups show a heterogeneity in the proudest nation and support the view that the races of the present day are but temporary integrations in the constant process of . . . mixing that marks the history of every living species.' The temptation to classify the human species into categories which have no objective basis is an inevitable but regrettable consequence of the gene frequency system when it is taken too far. For several years the study of human genetics got firmly bogged down in the intellectually pointless (and morally dangerous) morass of constructing ever more detailed classifications of human population groups.”
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