Jamie Ford · 290 pages
Rating: (223.4K votes)
“The hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“I had my chance.' He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. 'I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“He'd do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“I try not to live in the past...but...sometimes the past lives in me”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Henry was learning that time apart has a way of creating distance- more than mountains and time zone separating them. Real distance, the kind that makes you ache and stop wondering. Longing so bad that it begins to hurt to care so much.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Hope can get you through anything.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it's how you spend your time on the way down that counts.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“I think I get it now. It doesn't matter how nice home is--it just matters that it feels like home.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“It reminded him that time was short, but that beautiful endings could still be found at the end of cold, dreary days.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Like so many things Henry had wanted in life -- like his father, his marriage, his life -- it had arrived a little damaged. Imperfect. But he didn't care, this was all he'd wanted. Something to hope for, and he'd found it. It didn't matter what condition it was in.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Henry, this isn't about us. I mean it is, but they don't define you by the button you wear. They define you by what you do, by what your actions say about you. And coming here, despite your parents, says a lot to them- and me. And they're Americans first. They don't see you as the enemy. They see you as a person.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“After a lifetime of nods, frowns and stoic smiles, they were both fluent in emotional shorthand.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“A young nurse, someone new whom he didn't recognise, came up to Henry and patted him on the arm. "Are you a friend or a family member?" She whispered the question in his ear, trying not to disturb Sheldon.
The question hung there like a beautiful chord, ringing in the air. Henry was Chinese, Sheldon obviously wasn't. They looked nothing alike. Nothing at all. "I'm distant family," Henry said.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“So Henry found himself stepping off the bus three stops early and wandering over to the Panama Hotel, a place between worlds when he was a child, a place between times now that he was a grown man.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Loyalty. We're still loyal to the United States of America. Why? Because we too are Americans. We don't agree, but we will show our loyalty by our obedience.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“The more Henry though about the shabby old knickknacks, the forgotten treasures, the more he wondered if his own broken heart might be found in there, hidden among the unclaimed possessions of another time. Boarded up in the basement of a condemned hotel. Lost, but never forgotten.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Good Morning, Henry. How's it feel to be a prisoner for a day?' Henry looked at Keiko. 'Best day of my life.' Keiko found her smile all over again.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“I am what you made me, Father.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“I try not to live in the past, he thought, but who knows, sometimes the past lives in me.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Henry looked up and down the empty avenue—no cars or trucks anywhere. No bicycles. No paperboys. No fruit sellers or fish buyers. No flower carts or noodle stands. The streets were vacant, empty—the way he felt inside. There was no one left.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“It didn’t matter. He’d learned long ago: perfection isn’t what families are all about.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Henry handed the record to his old friend, who draped it across his chest. His eyes closed as if he were listening to the music play somewhere,sometime long ago.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Talking to strangers sounded like talking to no one, which Henry had some firsthand experience in- in real life. It was lonely. Almost as lonely as Lake View Cemetery, where he'd buried Ethel.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“The waitress brought a fresh pot of tea, and Marty refilled his father’s cup and poured a cup for Samantha. Henry in turn filled Marty’s. It was a tradition Henry cherished—never filling your own cup, always filling that of someone else, who would return the favor.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“People relations is hard business. Hard to keep that going.”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“-Kuinka kauan sinä odotat minua?
-Niin kauan kuin on tarvis. En välitä siitä mitä isäni sanoo.
-Entä jos joudun olemaan täällä, kunnes tulen vanhaksi ja hiukseni harmaantuvat?
-Sitten tuon sinulle kävelykepin”
― Jamie Ford, quote from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Time,” he said solemnly, “is comparable to a river flowing under a layer of ice. It stretches us out like water weeds, from root to tip, from birth to death, curled around whatever rocks or snags happen to lie in our path; and no one can get out of the river because of the ice roof, and no one can turn back against the current for an instant.”
― Tim Powers, quote from The Anubis Gates
“It's about time you saw how fortunate you are. You have ... the most virile man in the world." He grinned, and in his eyes, black as sin, she saw the devil inside him laughing. But he was her devil, and she loved him madly.
"The most conceited, you mean," she said.
He bent his head until his great Usignuolo nose loomed as inch from hers, "The most virile, " he repeated firmly. "You are pathetically slow if you haven't learned that by now. Fortunately for you, I am the most patient of tutors. I shall prove it to you."
"You patience?" she asked.
"My virility. Both. Repeatedly." His black eyes glinted. "I will teach you a lesson you'll never forget. "
She tangled her fingers in his hair and brought his mouth to hers. "My wicked darling," she whispered. "I should like to see you try.”
― Loretta Chase, quote from Lord of Scoundrels
“When my old life died, it didn’t go quietly. It detonated.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Beautiful Stranger
“His error lay in supposing that this age, more than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; in applying his own little life span as the measure of an interminable acheivement; and, more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in view whether he himself should contend for it or against it.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, quote from The House of the Seven Gables
“Wishing to make an effective entrance, he flung it wide open, when a heavy jug of water fell right down on him, wetting him to the skin, and just missing his left shoulder by a couple of inches. At the same moment he heard stifled shrieks of laughter proceeding from the four-post bed.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Canterville Ghost
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