Quotes from The Guest Room

“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

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Popular quotes

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“Their history wasn’t so far off the mean track, they were going through what a thousand other civilizations had gone through, and no doubt in the childhood of each of those there had been countless occasions when all any decent, well-balanced, reasonable and humanely concerned observer would have wanted to do was scream in despair.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The State of the Art

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“What a silly routine, Natalie thought, not realizing, sitting there alone on the stool in the center of the ring of girls, how she was jeopardizing her own future in college, her own future for four years and perhaps for the rest of her life; how even worse than the actual being a bad sport was the state of mind which led her into defiance of this norm, this ring of placid, masked girls, with their calm futures ahead and their regular pasts proven beyond a doubt; how one person stepping however aside from their meaningless, echoing standards, set perhaps by a violent movement before their recollection, and handed down to them by other placid creatures, might lose a seat among them by questions, by rebellion, by anything except a cheerful smile and a resolution to hurt other people.”
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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.