Quotes from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“We are each the love of someone's life.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“People always say the greatest love story in the world is Romeo and Juliet. I don't know. At fourteen, at seventeen, I remember, it takes over your whole life." Alice was worked up now, her face flushed and alive, her hands cutting through the night-blooming air. "You think about nobody, nothing else, you don't eat or sleep, you just think about this . . . it's overwhelming. I know, I remember. But is it love? Like how you have cheap brandy when you're young and you think it's marvelous, just so elegant, and you don't know, you don't know anything . . . because, you've never tasted anything better. You're fourteen."

It was no time for lying. "I think it's love"

You do?"

I think maybe it's the only true love."

She was about to say something, and stopped herself. I'd surprised her, I suppose. "How sad if you're right," she said, closing her eyes for a moment. "Because we never end up with them. How sad and stupid if that's how it works.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“It takes too much imagination to see the sorrows of people we take for happy. Their real battles take place, like those of the stars, in some realm of light imperceptible to the human eye. It is a feat of the mind to guess another's heart.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one's life for love.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“Some things are so impossible, so fantastic, that when they happen, you are not at all surprised. Their sheer impossibility has made you imagine them too many times in your head, and when you find yourself on that longed-for moonlit path, it seems unreal but still, somehow, familiar. You dreamed of it, of course; you know it like a memory.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“Here was a thing that would grow old; here was a thing that would turn beautiful and lose that beauty, that would inherit the grace but also the bad ear and flawed figure of her mother, that would smile too much and squint too often and spend the last decades of her life creaming away the wrinkles made in youth until she finally gave up and wore a collar of pears to hide a wattle; here was the ordinary sadness of the world.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“Despite all their fears, we ask very little of the ones who never loved us. We do not ask for sympathy or pain or compassion. We simply want to know why.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“As the Japanese will tell you, one can train a rose to grow through anything, to grow through a nautilus even, but it must be done with tenderness.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“It is almost another kind of love, being loved. It is the same heat but from another room; it is the same sound but from a high window...”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“The shock was akin to that of buying, out of duty, a novel written by a dull and uninspired acquaintance and finding there passages of heartrending beauty and rapture that one could never imagine coming from such a tedious person.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“We have no heart at seventeen. We think we do; we think we have been cursed with a holy, bloated thing that twitches at the name we adore, but it is not a heart because though it will forfeit anything in the world-the mind, the body, the future, even the last lonely hour it has-it will not sacrifice itself.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“years; they had exchanged just one letter, one glance in”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli

About the author

Popular quotes

“Докато си мислех така, появиха се миризмите и зловонията. Всичките. Гонеха се, отстъпваха си място, бягаха и се връщаха: миризмата на тераса с гълъби , и зловонието на белина, което опознах що за зловоние е, след като се ожених. И миризмата на кръв, която беше като предизвестие за миризмата на смъртта. И миризмата на сяра от ракетите и фишеците – тогава на площад „Диамант“, и миризмата на хартия от хартиените цветя, и миризмата на суха зеленина, която се ронеше по земята и образуваше килим от дребни листенца, които бяха зеленината, избягала от клонката. И силната миризма на морето. Погладих очите си с ръка. Питах се защо зловонията се наричат зловония, а миризмите – миризми и защо да не може да се казва зловония на миризмите и миризми на зловонията, и тогава се появи миризмата на Антони, когато беше бъден и после миризмата на Антони, когато спеше. – бях казал на Кимет, че може би дървоядите вместо да работят отвън навътре, работят отвътре навън и през кръглите дупчици си показват главите и се замислят за белите, които вършат. – И миризмата на децата, когато бяха малки – на мляко и на лиги, на прясно мляко и на вкиснато мляко. – Госпожа Енрикета ми беше казала, че имаме няколко живота, преплетени един в друг, но смърт или женитба, понякога, не винаги, ги разделя и истинският живот, освободен от всякакви връзки с онези няколко лоши живота, с които е обвързан, може да живее, както би трябвало да живее винаги, ако онези няколко лоши живота го бяха оставили на мира. Казваше още, че те се карат и ни измъчват, а ние нищо не знаем, как то не знаем нито за работата на сърцето, нито за голямото вълнение на червата… И миризмата на чаршафите, по б рали моето тяло и тялото на Антони, онази миризма на уморен чаршаф, който всмуква миризмата на човека. И миризмата на косите върху възглавницата, и миризмата на всички тези боклучета, които краката оставят в края на леглото, и миризмата на носените дрехи, оставени през нощта на някой стол… И миризмата на зърното, на картофите и на бутилката със сода каустик… Дръжката на ножа беше дървена, закована с три пирончета със сплескани глави, за да не може никога повече да се откачи от острието.”
― Mercè Rodoreda, quote from The Time of the Doves

“You know when you're floating on your back in the lake, the water rises and falls against your ears? So that for half a second you can hear everything around you and then for the other half a second everything's muted? It almost feels like your suspended between two worlds.”
― Tricia Rayburn, quote from Siren

“The look on his face is sweet and distinctly red; he is a cherry Life Saver.”
― David Cristofano, quote from The Girl She Used to Be

“(kadın için) -böylece çok garip ve karışık bir varlık çıkıyor ortaya. Hayal edildiğinde çok önemli, pratikte ise tamamen önemsiz. Şiir kitaplarını baştan sona istila etmiş, tarihte ise adı geçmiyor. Kurmacalarda, kralların ve fatihlerin hayatlarına hükmediyor; gerçek hayatta ailesinin parmağına yüzüğü taktığı herhangi bir delikanlının kölesi. Dudaklarından, edebiyatın en ilham verici sözcükleri, en derin duygularından bazıları dökülüyor, gerçek hayatta okuması yazması neredeyse yok, zor heceliyor sözcükleri ve kocasının malı durumunda.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas

“I swear you must have a rainbow shooting out of your ass, you're so bright and shiny and wonderful.”
― Kate Rockland, quote from Falling Is Like This

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.