Caleb Crain Quotes

No radio, no telephone," Melinda observed. "No mod cons whatsoever in Hloubetin, are there."
"We have a hamster," Jacob said.
"Not traditionally considered an amenity.

The worse one sins, the more of a moralist one becomes.

Jacob thought about going home. He still had some American change, which he kept in an empty matchbox in his sock drawer, and one night, after he had finished his pancakes and jam, he took the coins out, spread them on the kitchen table, and admired the burnt sienna patina of one of the pennies, which in the candlelight was iridescent with violet and green where people's touch had salted it. The portrait of Lincoln was ugly and noble, and Jacob took off his glasses to look more closely. On the other side, an erratic line of shrubbery was engraved beside the Lincoln monument's steps. The idealism seemed to be in Lincoln rather than in the coin's design, which was homely. It was so homely, in fact, that there was a kind of democratic grandeur to it. It was the most beautiful currency in the world. Jacob was on the verge of tears.

It was strange that one couldn't know in advance which places one was later going to wish to remember.

What if his ambitions was just a name he gave to a kind of conformity, and he was going back because he wasn't brave enough to live a life that wasn't expected of him, a life so far from any road that there wouldn't be any signposts or milestones?

To find the spirit of change - was that it? - after the change had happened.

Everyday life continues during a love affair.

Because the air was bright and fresh, the ground beneath them empty, and both of them young, it was possible to imagine that either of them could become anything he wanted.

And suddenly it was all too much for him. He felt sad and misplaced, with the abrupt, overwhelming, dizzying sadness that comes over people in countries not their own, which has none of the richness of feeling that usually comes with sadness but is rather a kind of exhaustion.

Since he had given up men he had taken up geography. He visited a new sight or a new neighborhood nearly every weekend.

They're ruining the city, aren't they," remarked Rafe. "The backpackers.

The beer was cheap, the fiddling sharp, and the dancing sweaty.

By its nature a relationship was not an accomplishment. It was just a connection that happened to exist, for as long as it did exist.

Overhead lights flickered on and off.
"It is closing soon," Markus explained.
"Now is what I call tiger time. The great beasts pad about, eyeing one another, trying to make up their minds at last.

Everyone likes to say they're tolerant.

They sat talking naked so often and so long perhaps because they liked to be able to read the whole opalescent page of each other at once.

Like capitalism," Carl suggested. "'We'll give you so much pleasure, you'll never want to try another socioeconomic system.

Unable to see, they were briefly seized by the characteristic Prague anxiety of never finding the entrance
of arriving at one's goal but remaining blocked from it by a wall or a stone on account of having overlooked an alley or medieval door a few dozen yards back, which has served as the approach so immemorially that no one any longer marked or described it.

Jacob opened the refrigerator and stared into it vacantly, with the false purposefulness that lingers for a few moments when a person of a solitary nature is released from the company of a strong personality.

It's a question of wanting to know how the story turns out. And one can only know that about one story, ever.

It was a mistake to think that in the new world they would be able to care in the old way. In the new world you had to find something of value and learn not to care for it. You had to learn how to sell it.

But what are they?" Annie asked.
"An omphalos, probably," said Jacob.
"A what, dear?" Melinda asked.
"A bellybutton of the world."
"I didn't know it had one.

They're very keen on disillusioning young women at British universities, you know, I suppose to make us resigned and grateful later on.

In Rome the statues, in Paris the paintings, and in Prague the buildings suggest that pleasure can be an education.

I just remembered. My hamster is loose."
"Is that a thing to say to a nice girl?