“If you've had good gin on a hot day in Southern California with the people you love, you forget Nebraska. The two things cannot coexist. The stronger, better of the two wins.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“Nothing comforted Sabine like long division. That was how she had passed time waiting for Phan and then Parsifal to come back from their tests. She figured the square root of the date while other people knit and read. Sabine blamed much of the world's unhappiness on the advent of calculators.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“People made her tired. The way they were easy with one another, the way they seemed so natural, only made her sad.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“I don’t want to wind up some old woman who talks to her rabbit,” she said to Rabbit, who was chewing so furiously he didn’t even bother to lift his head.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“The general wisdom around here is if you can’t get it at Wal-Mart, you don’t need it.” Sabine looked up at the brown building, which was itself the size of another parking lot. “I’ve never actually been in one of these.” “Go on,” Kitty said. Sabine shook her head. “I’ve just never had any reason to.” Kitty stubbed out her cigarette and replaced her mitten. “Well, you are in for a treat.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“Kitty stopped the cart and put in two three-packs of paper towels. “Sale.” Sabine nodded. Was $2.49 a good price? To know if paper towels were a deal this time, you’d have to remember what they cost last time. Sabine could never remember.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“She could read the patterns, knew at a glance a Melas from a Konya, a Ladik from a Sivas. She loved the Ladik.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“to never have to look at someone who was remembering when you have made such a concerted effort to forget.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“If someone were to have pressed a sheet of glass down over the top of Alliance, Nebraska, in winter, it would have resembled an ant farm. Everything was a tunnel eaten neatly, carefully into the snow. The tunnel of the streets branching into the narrower tunnels of driveways and carved-out sidewalks. The snow banked over cars, lawn furniture, porches, like frozen animal carcasses stored for future need.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“She put no stock in dreams. To her they were just a television left on in another room.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“For twenty-two years Sabine had told her stories to one person, so that the action and the telling had become inseparable. What was left was half a life, the one where she lived it but had nothing later to give shape to the experience.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“I don’t want to wind up some old woman who talks to her rabbit,” she said to Rabbit,”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“The idea that she would have the opportunity to get over something thrilled her. The”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“She didn’t even think about the drive. She was from Los Angeles; driving was simply part of it.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“...Nebraska was white, a page as still as fallen snow. It was not crosshatched with roads, overrun with the hard lines of interstate systems. It was a state on which you could make lists, jot down phone numbers, draw pictures.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“He began the patter, the Ladies-and-gentlemen-I-want-to-welcome-you-to. Dot and Bertie Fetters sat forward in their seats, so thrilled to be entertained that for the moment they forgot that the purpose of their trip was to mourn. But then that was the point of magic, to take people in, make them forget what was real and possible. They were so utterly game that when Sam Spender asked if there was anyone in the audience from out of town, they raised their hands, not knowing that everyone in Los Angeles was from out of town.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“Nothing comforted Sabine like long division. That was how she had passed time waiting for Phan and then Parsifal to come back from their tests. She figured the square root of the date while other people knit and read. Sabine blamed much of the world’s unhappiness on the advent of calculators.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
Ann Patchett
Born place: in Los Angeles, CA, The United States
Born date December 2, 1963
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“In the Principia Mathematica, Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead attempted to give a rigorous foundation to mathematics using formal logic as their basis. They began with what they considered to be axioms, and used those to derive theorems of increasing complexity. By page 362, they had established enough to prove "1 + 1 = 2.”
― Ted Chiang, quote from Stories of Your Life and Others
“Over the obsidian hills and the sunken yellow dale, through the vast oceans of fog and the fires of nevermore, sits the fickle doors of the land of twilight. I will traverse it all, and execute righteous judgment on all that oppose me.”
― H.S. Crow, quote from Lunora and the Monster King
“The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.”
― Rebecca Solnit, quote from Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power
“Logically, when the amygdala wants to mobilize a behavior—say, fleeing—it talks to the frontal cortex, seeking its executive approval. But if sufficiently aroused, the amygdala talks directly to subcortical, reflexive motor pathways. Again, there’s a trade-off—increased speed by by-passing the cortex, but decreased accuracy. Thus the input shortcut may prompt you to see the cell phone as a gun. And the output shortcut may prompt you to pull a trigger before you consciously mean to.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, quote from Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
“Hasn't anyone told you anger is unbecoming?”
― Sara Ella, quote from Unblemished
Digital Fortress
Song of Solomon
Princess Academy
The Magic Mountain
The Power of Myth
Under the DomeBookQuoters 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.
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