Quotes from The Lonely Polygamist

Brady Udall ·  602 pages

Rating: (14.1K votes)


“...Families are Forever, and wondered if the slogan was meant as a promise or a threat.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


“For most affairs, this eventually becomes the most fundamental of questions, the only one that matters: Do we love each other more than the lives we already have? It is the question that hovers in the background of every secret phone call, flavors every tryst with the head of possibilities of apocalypse and renewal; and it is the answer to that question, or the lack thereof, that so often dooms an affair to failure.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


“When it comes to love, everyone is a liar.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


“She considered, maybe for the first time, how lucky she was to be able to pick up the phone and call her mother whenever she needed bad advice.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


“Because this, after all, was the basic truth they all chose to live by: that love was no finite commodity. That it was not subject to the cruel reckoning of addition and subtraction, that to give to one did not necessarily mean to take from another; that the heart, in its infinite capacity-even the confused and cheating heart of the man in front of her, even the paltry thing now clenched and faltering inside her own chest-could open itself to all who would enter, like a house with windows and doors thrown wide, like the heart of God itself, vast and accommodating and holy, a mansion of rooms without number, full of multitudes without end.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist



“For Golden it was hard not to think that there might be something wrong about a household in which the dog was wearing underwear and the children weren't.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


“But Golden's dark form in the doorway had imprinted something new and painful on the hard plates of her chest: that old devil, hope. The kind of hope that abandons you in your worst moments and is suddenly there again, weeks later, trailing you like the stubborn, slinking dog who will not take no for an answer. The kind of greedy hope that tricks you into believing that at least some of the things taken from you might be restored, that after everything, you might find your way back to something like happiness.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


“. . . Golden would find himself thinking that if he ever became delusional or foolhardy enough to outfit one of his houses with a complaint box, it would need to be about the size of a refrigerator.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


“He knows that for all the undeserved bounty of his life, she will always be there, at the edge of his vision, to remind him of all the things he can never have.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


“Even in the midst of all this commotion she knows none of it really belongs to her, and marvels at the strange fact of her dearest wish: to be part of it, to give in to it's distractions, to find herself the owner of a life lived rather than a life endured. And then she looks into the face of Mother #3, worn smooth and almost featureless, with moist eyes that can't seem to settle on anything for more than a heartbeat at a time, and she knows this is a very dangerous wish.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist



“When she's next to him, when she rests her hand on his, his whole body aches with something like knowledge for all he has lost, the chances he will never have, to return such a touch, to fall of a horse or eat chinese food or shoot a crossbow (which has always been one of his most dear wishes), to receive a letter in the mail, to be kissed with longing or punched in the jaw.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


Video

About the author

Brady Udall
Born place: St. Johns, Arizona, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Villainy can win against one library, but not against an organization of readers.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?


“He combed a hand through his tousled brown hair, and Camille noticed how handsome he was. Beneath the dirt and insincerity, anyway.”
― Angie Frazier, quote from Everlasting


“It wasn’t that she didn’t want to die. Nor was it that she wanted to live. She just didn’t want to give up.”
― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow


“El polizonte era capaz de anonadarlo, a fuerza de denuncias. Por ejemplo, vería a tu gato vagabundeando y te denunciaría por dejar tus animales errantes...;”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Racconti


“the cat unsheathes its claws
the world turns”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


Interesting books

Sons and Lovers
(40.6K)
Sons and Lovers
by D.H. Lawrence
Fall of Giants
(206.9K)
Fall of Giants
by Ken Follett
Master of the Game
(44.9K)
Master of the Game
by Sidney Sheldon
As You Like It
(64.1K)
As You Like It
by William Shakespeare
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
(152.6K)
The Hundred-Year-Old...
by Jonas Jonasson
Monsters of Men
(52.8K)
Monsters of Men
by Patrick Ness

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.