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
See more on GoodReads
“Don't sound so grumpy. Next thing you know you'll be whinning and giving me puppy dog eyes.”
― Dana Marie Bell, quote from Shadow of the Wolf
“And if you ask Sister Camillus at school why, she says it's a mystery and you'll find out when you die.”
― Lindsey Barraclough, quote from Long Lankin
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King Jr.”
― quote from While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement
“Literary scholar Hamid Dabashi notes the curious case of the English language novel The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, written by a traveler named James Morier, who pretended he had merely translated a Persian original. Morier used a ridiculous diction in his novel to lampoon Persian speech and depicted Iranians as dishonest scoundrels and buffoons. Then, in the 1880s, an astounding thing happened. Iranian grammarian Mirza Habib translated Hajji Baba into Persian. Remarkably, what in English was offensive racist trash became, in translation, a literary masterpiece that laid the groundwork for a modernist Persian literary voice and “a seminal text in the course of the constitutional movement.” The ridicule that Morier directed against Iranians in an Orientalist manner, the translator redirected against clerical and courtly corruption in Iranian society, thereby transforming Hajji Baba into an incendiary political critique.2”
― Tamim Ansary, quote from Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
“Purple prose attracts attention more than converts.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
See Me
Fault Lines
The Center of Everyt...
The 13 Clocks
Ethics
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
