Quotes from Typical American

Gish Jen ·  304 pages

Rating: (1.3K votes)


“A man was the sum of his limits; freedom only made him see how much so.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American


“One left; things shifted in one's absence; one returned to something else. Time frustrated all. There was no sneaking past its rough guard, even to get to one's own yard of intimacies.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American


“Anything is possible. A man is what he makes up his mind to be.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American


“He was like a nation in crisis, looking back, and back and back — its history might be ugly, but its past shone perfect.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American


“Of course he bothers me. He's my husband.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American



About the author

Gish Jen
Born place: in Long Island, New York, The United States
Born date August 12, 1955
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Maybe all you needed in life was the belief you could change things. Somehow. Some way.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from What's a Girl Gotta Do?


“I am mostly human. But when I allow myself to use the gifts my mother gave me, I become something else. And it kills me a little inside each time I have to fight it back off.”
― Tricia Levenseller, quote from Daughter of the Pirate King


“Because it seems like a lot of hassle, liking someone. Your brain runs hot, the cogs inside your mind jarring together until all the oil of your thoughts is burned away. The fire spreads to your chest, where it chars your lungs and turns your heart to embers. And right when you think the flames have burned away everything but your skeleton, the spark skips from your bones to immolate not only your flesh, but your entire life.”
― Krystal Sutherland, quote from Our Chemical Hearts


“You are woven into my soul and you are wrapped around my heart.”
― Emma Chase, quote from Royally Matched


“I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would never even have crossed a kid's mind to tell an adult to fuck off. There was plenty of bad there, I don't forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn't break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbors, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero.

Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it's spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the businessmen shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can't have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.”
― Tana French, quote from Broken Harbor


Interesting books

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
(36.1K)
Flow: The Psychology...
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
A Grimm Warning
(19.2K)
A Grimm Warning
by Chris Colfer
The Kindly Ones
(37.5K)
The Kindly Ones
by Neil Gaiman
Lord of the Fading Lands
(14.4K)
Lord of the Fading L...
by C.L. Wilson
Still Life With Crows
(26.5K)
Still Life With Crow...
by Douglas Preston
Princess in the Spotlight
(47K)
Princess in the Spot...
by Meg Cabot

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.