Quotes from The Guest Room

Chris Bohjalian ·  336 pages

Rating: (20.9K votes)


“She cringed when she saw she needed a bikini wax - and cringed that she even got them in the first place. It wasn't the pain. It was the whole idea she was raising her daughter in a world where pubic hair was a problem.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room


“She would hear the verbal balancing act: urgency mixed like gin amid the tonic of consideration.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room


“crime? I was in trouble because a man had said I was not clean there. He was lying. He only said that because he was not clean there and I told him we should shower before we fucked.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room


“gentlemen’s clubs—now there was a ridiculous euphemism”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room


“But if you are a person who needs no one’s approval, you are probably crazy and live alone on an island or the top of a mountain somewhere.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room



“She had read articles over the years about a man's supposed biological craving for young women: it was all about primeval procreation, in theory, the need to plant seed in fertile soil. Maybe. ... She thought of a line from Nabokov: "Because you took advantage of my disadvantage." Lolita. In this case, however, Kristin felt that she was at the disadvantage - not the young thing. The truth was, she feared, all men were Humbert Humbert. Maybe they weren't pedophiles lusting after twelve-year-olds, but didn't Lolita look old for her age? Older, anyway? Sure, there were MILFs in porn, but Kristin had a feeling that considerably more men wanted their porn stars to be students at Duke University than moms from the bleachers at a middle-school soccer game.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room


“A moment later, all of the men at the party, stupefied by the way the hooker had gone banshee,”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room


“If you were Bill Clinton, how did you justify Monica Lewinsky to Chelsea? What did you say about the cigar and the beret and the little blue dress? If you were Anthony Weiner, how in the world did you explain to your daughter your apparently insatiable need to text pictures of your junk to strange women?”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room


“...this was why men fell in love with strippers and escorts: it wasn't the licentiousness, the dissembling, their craven willingness to do whatever you wanted. It was the way they would, out of the blue, surprise you with the psychic ability to know what you needed.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room


About the author

Chris Bohjalian
Born place: in White Plains, New York, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Stefan was the one who ... the one she loved. But he'd never understood that love was not singular. He'd never understood that she could be in love with Damon and that it would never change an atom's worth of her love for him. Or that his lack of understanding had been so wrenching and painful that she had felt torn in two different people at times.”
― L.J. Smith, quote from Midnight


“The tears of those who never cry, the calm, the levelheaded ones, are terrible to see. She seemed to be split or torn by the force of the tears, which she squeezed her eyes shut against, which she forced back with her fist against her lips. Smokey, afraid and awed, came immediately to her as he might to rescue his child from a fire, without thought and without knowing quite what he would do. When he tried to take her hand, speak softly to her, she only trembled more violently, the red cross branded on her face grew uglier; so he enveloped her, smothered the flames, Disregarding her resistance, as well as he could he covered her, having a vague idea that he could by tenderness invade her and then rout her grief, whatever it was, by main strength. He wasn't sure he wasn't himself the cause of it, wasn't sure if she would cling to him for comfort or break him in rage, but he had no choice anyway, savior or sacrifice, it didn't matter so long as she could cease suffering.”
― John Crowley, quote from Little, Big


“I am confident, because you said yes. Or was it....." He looks up to the ceiling in deep thought and then back at me. "Oh, I remember. It was...yes, yes, yes, fucking hell, yes!”
― Jodi Ellen Malpas, quote from Beneath This Man


“Time was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Thief of Time


“Okay, okay, okay. I understood that pushing the elevator button over and over again would not make the elevator appear sooner. But I couldn't help myself”
― James Patterson, quote from Sundays at Tiffany's


Interesting books

Mister Pip
(15.5K)
Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
Even Now
(19.7K)
Even Now
by Karen Kingsbury
Hold Tight
(35.3K)
Hold Tight
by Harlan Coben
Scott Pilgrim, Volume 2: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
(51.9K)
Scott Pilgrim, Volum...
by Bryan Lee O'Malley
I Am One of You Forever
(1.1K)
I Am One of You Fore...
by Fred Chappell
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
(16.6K)
The Code Book: The S...
by Simon Singh

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.