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?”
“Low down dirty ornery rotten skunk of a cussed mule-headed soldier! What's he want with my book anyway? And what kind of a way is that to write a congratulations? I am so mad I could walk clear to that fort and take him on single handed.”
“No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.
Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day.
This is all practice.”
“I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise.”
“lifers” who had been around long enough to understand the game with some perspective”
“Not in this lifetime, buddy,” I said finally. “Resistance is futile, Kitten.” “So is your charm.” “We’ll see.”
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