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
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Popular quotes

“Many of the people who left the South never exactly sat their children down to tell them these things, tell them what happened and why they left and how they and all this blood kin came to be in this northern city or western suburb or why they speak like melted butter and their children speak like footsteps on pavement, prim and proper or clipped and fast, like the New World itself. Some spoke of specific and certain evils. Some lived in tight-lipped and cheerful denial. Others simply had no desire to relive what they had already left. The facts of their lives unfurled over the generations like an over-wrapped present, a secret told in syllables. Sometimes the migrants dropped puzzle pieces from the past while folding the laundry or stirring the corn bread, and the children would listen between cereal commercials and not truly understand until they grew up and had children and troubles of their own. And the ones who had half-listened would scold and kick themselves that they had not paid better attention when they had the chance.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, quote from The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration


“كل عمل يتميز بنواياه وكل نية تتميز بعملها. كل شئ في الكون هو كل شئ آخر, والشيطان ليس سوي ملاك آراد المزيد.”
― Craig Clevenger, quote from Dermaphoria


“Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory," Gregory said, "It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good.”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher


“You’re killing me, Elle. I feel like I’m fourteen with you. I’m walking around with a hard-on half the time from just thinking about you. I’m never going to be able to sleep tonight now.”
― Vi Keeland, quote from Worth the Fight


“Something told me though that the small hunter would find a way to wrangle herself out of it. I chuckled softly before thrusting myself off the railing.”
― Bella Forrest, quote from A Break of Day


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