Amor Towles Quotes

Little closer, as if I hadn't quite heard him. I leaned at an angle five degrees less acute than the waitress had. - What's that? - I was wondering if there's a melody in there. - It just went out for a smoke. It'll be back in a minute. But I take it that you don't ~ Amor Towles

...the book had been written with winter nights in mind. Without a doubt, it was a book for when the birds had flown south, the wood was stacked by the fireplace, and the fields were white with snow; that is, for when one had no desire to venture out and one's friends had no desire to venture in. ~ Amor Towles

For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense. ~ Amor Towles

It is a well-known fact that of all the species on earth Homo sapiens is among the most adaptable. Settle a tribe of them in a desert and they will wrap themselves in cotton, sleep in tents, and travel on the backs of camels; settle them in the Arctic and they will wrap themselves in sealskin, sleep in igloos, and travel by dog-drawn sled. And if you settle them in a Soviet climate? They will learn to make friendly conversation with strangers while waiting in line; they will learn to neatly stack their clothing in their half of the bureau drawer; and they will learn to draw imaginary buildings in their sketchbooks. That is, they will adapt. ~ Amor Towles

I'll tell you what is convenient," he said after a moment. "To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment's notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka - and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most." Anna ~ Amor Towles

But correspondents are a wily bunch. Having stashed their typewriters, crossed the border, changed their clothes, and counted to ten, they began slipping back into the country one by one. So in 1928, the Foreign Press Office was opened anew on the top floor of a six-story walk-up conveniently located halfway between the Kremlin and the offices of the secret police - a spot that just happened to be across the street from the Metropol. Thus, ~ Amor Towles

In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquium, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world's oldest problems in its newest nomenclature. ~ Amor Towles

As the sign over the cash register made clear, the three ways you could get your coffee at Chester's were sweetened, unsweetened, and somewhere else. ~ Amor Towles

A king fortifies himself with a castle," observed the Count, "a gentleman with a desk." As ~ Amor Towles

Before one travels abroad, it is best to have a simple, heartwarming soup from home, so that one can recall it fondly should one ever happen to feel a little ~ Amor Towles

Since the beginning of storytelling, he explained, Death has called on the unwitting. In one tale or another, it arrives quietly in town and takes a room at an inn, or lurks in an alleyway, or lingers in the marketplace, surreptitiously. Then just when the hero has a moment of respite from his daily affairs, Death pays him a visit. This is all well and good, allowed the Count. But what is rarely related is the fact that Life is every bit as devious as Death. It too can wear a hooded coat. It too can slip into town, lurk in an alley, or wait in the back of a tavern. Hadn't it paid such a visit to Mishka? Hadn't it found him hiding behind his books, lured him out of the library, and taken his hand on a secluded spot overlooking the Neva? ~ Amor Towles

Surely, the span of time between the placing of an order and the arrival of appetizers is one of the most perilous in all human interaction. What young lovers have not found themselves at this juncture in a silence so sudden, so seemingly insurmountable that it threatens to cast doubt upon their chemistry as a couple? What husband and wife have not found themselves suddenly unnerved by the fear that they might not ever have something urgent, impassioned, or surprising to say to each other again? ~ Amor Towles

Suddenly,I could picture Tinker on the back of a horse somewhere: at the edge of the treeline under a towering sky ... at his college roommate's ranch, perhaps ... where rhey hunted deer with antique rifles and with dogs that were better bred than me. ~ Amor Towles

But, of course, a thing is just a thing. [… ] the Count looked once more at what heirlooms remained and then expunged them from his heartache forever. ~ Amor Towles

What is your favorite day of the year? The summer solstice. June twenty-first. The longest day of the year. It was a cute answer. But on cooler reflection, it struck me that when you're asked your favorite day of the year, there's a certain hubris in giving any day in June as your answer. It suggests that the particulars of your life are so terrific, and your command over your station so secure, that all you could possibly hope for is additional daylight in which to celebrate your lot. ~ Amor Towles

Presumably, the bells of the Church of the Ascension had been reclaimed by the Bolsheviks for the manufacture of artillery, thus returning them to the realm from whence they came. Though for all the Count knew, the cannons that had been salvaged from Napoleon's retreat to make the Ascension's bells had been forged by the French from the bells at La Rochelle; which in turn had been forged from British blunderbusses seized in the Thirty Years War. From bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time. ~ Amor Towles

Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve- if not glacially, then at least gradually. ~ Amor Towles

Silence can be a form of protest. It can be a means of survival. But it can also be a school of poetry - one with its own meter, tropes, and conventions. One that needn't be written with pencils or pens; but that can be written in the soul with a revolver to the chest." With ~ Amor Towles

By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration - and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them ~ Amor Towles

He looked like he was back outside the emergency room. When I stepped off the elevator he was visibly relieved, as if he had begun to worry that I wasn't going to show. He took both my hands in his. The features of his face had softened, as if he had put on the ten pounds that Eve had lost in the hospital. - Katey! Thanks for coming. It's good to see you. He was talking a little under his breath. It raised my antennae. ~ Amor Towles

I suppose a room is the summation of all that has happened inside it. ~ Amor Towles

I knew too well the nature of life's distractions and enticements-how the piecemeal progress of our hopes and ambitions commands our undivided attention, reshaping the ethereal into the tangible, and commitments into compromises. ~ Amor Towles

In moments of high emotion, whether they're triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment, if the next thing you are going to say makes you feel better, than it's probably the wrong thing to say. ~ Amor Towles

Long had he believed that a gentleman should turn to a mirror with a sense of distrust. For rather than being tools of self-discovery, mirrors tended to be tools of self-deceit. ~ Amor Towles

She is no more than thirty pounds; no more than three feet tall; her entire bag of belongings could fit in a single drawer; she rarely peaks unless spoken to; and her heart beats no louder than a bird's. So how is it possible that she takes up so much space?! ~ Amor Towles

- You see this apple? Sweet. Crisp. Ruby red. It wasn't always like that, you know. The first apples in America were mottled and too bitter to eat. But after generations of grafting, now they're all like this one. Most people think this is man's victory over nature. But it's not. In evolutionary terms, it's the apple's victory. ~ Amor Towles

The stamps on the envelope were English. One was the head of a statesman engraved in purple and the others were motorcars engraved in blue. It seemed like every country in the world had stamps of statesmen and motorcars. Where were the stamps of the elevator boys and hapless housewives? Of the six-story walk-ups and soured wine? ~ Amor Towles

But having mastered the art of descending the stairs to a gathering of admirers, she had yet to master the art of ascending the stairs alone. Perhaps no one has. ~ Amor Towles

By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End The ~ Amor Towles

(Lest you have forgotten, it is quite excruciating to hammer the back of your thumb. It inevitably prompts a hopping up and down and the taking of the Lord's name in vain.) But ~ Amor Towles

In the doleful court behind my building a patchwork of windows was all that separated me from a hundred muted lives being led without mystery or menace or magic. ~ Amor Towles

Because the Bolsheviks, who were so intent upon recasting the future from a mold of their own making, would not rest until every last vestige of his Russia had been uprooted, shattered, or erased. Returning ~ Amor Towles

the only things that came from the practice were foolhardy acts, ill-advised liaisons, and gambling debts. ~ Amor Towles

To get out of that party, we both would have volunteered to walk a rabid dog. ~ Amor Towles

He had that certain confidence in his bearing, that democratic interest in his surroundings, and that understated presumption of friendliness that are only found in young men who have been raised in the company of money and manners. It didn't occur to people liek this that they might be unwelcome in a new environment - and as a result they rarely were. ~ Amor Towles

on a map: There it ~ Amor Towles

If Broadway was a river running from the top of Manhattan down to the Battery, undulating with traffic and commerce and lights, then the east-west streets were eddies where, leaf-like, one could turn slow circles from the beginning to the ever shall be, world without end. ~ Amor Towles

When I awake, I suddenly understood this propensity for self-destruction was not an abomination, not something to be ashamed of or abhorred; it was our greatest strength. We turn the gun on ourselves not because we are more indifferent and less cultured...on the contrary. We are prepared to destroy that which we have created because we believe more than any of them in the power of the picture, the poem, the prayer, or the person. ~ Amor Towles

Now they were satisfied to express their individuality through which Rogers they preferred at the Saturday matinee: Ginger or Roy or Buck. America may be the land of opportunity, but in New York it's the shot at conformity that pulls them through the door ~ Amor Towles

Like the American correspondents, jazz seemed a naturally gregarious force - one that was a little unruly and prone to say the first thing that popped into its head, but generally of good humor and friendly intent. In addition, it seemed decidedly unconcerned with where it had been or where it was going - exhibiting somehow simultaneously the confidence of the master and the inexperience of the apprentice. Was there any wonder that such an art had failed to originate in Europe? The ~ Amor Towles

And this must be especially so, when those with newfound power are men who distrust any form of hesitation or nuance, and who prize self-assurance above all. For ~ Amor Towles

To be seduced? Why, that was a matter of leaning back in one's chair, sipping one's wine, and responding to a query with the very first thought that has popped into one's head. And ~ Amor Towles

Man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them ~ Amor Towles

But do you think the achievements of the Americans -- envied the world over -- came without a cost? Just ask their African brothers. And do you think the engineers who designed their illustrious skyscrapers or built their highways hesitated for one moment to level the lovely little neighborhoods that stood in their way? I guarantee you, Alexander, they laid the dynamite and pushed the plungers themselves. ~ Amor Towles

If they (ghosts) wander the halls of night, it is not from a grievance with or envy of the living. Rather, it is because they have no desire to see the living at all. Any more than snakes hope to see gardeners, or foxes the hounds. They wander about at midnight because at that hour they can generally do so without being harried by the sound and fury of earthly emotions. After all those years of striving and struggling, of hoping and praying, of shouldering expectations, stomaching opinions, navigating decorum, and making conversation, what they seek, quite simply, is a little peace and quiet. ~ Amor Towles

Manners are not like bonbons, Nina. You may not choose the ones that suit you best; and you certainly cannot put the half-bitten ones back in the box. . . ." Nina ~ Amor Towles

If we earn fifty cents an hour, we admire the rich and pity the poor, and we reserve the full force of our venom for those who make a penny more or a penny less. ~ Amor Towles

That's the problem with being born in New York, the old newsman observed a little sadly. You've got no New York to run away to. ~ Amor Towles

Vyshinsky: And your occupation? ~ Amor Towles

Events can unfold in such a manner that overnight the man out of step finds himself in the right place at the right time.... Then, like a lone sailor adrift for years on alien seas, he wakes one night to discover familiar constellations overhead. And when this occurs -- this extraordinary realignment of the stars -- the man so long out of step with his time experiences a supreme lucidity. Suddenly all that has passed comes into focus as a necessary course of events, and all that promises to unfold has the clearest rhyme and reason. ~ Amor Towles

Whichever wine was within, it was decidedly not identical to its neighbors. On the contrary, the contents of the bottle in his hand was the product of a history as unique and complex as that of a nation, or a man. In its color, aroma, and taste, it would certainly express the idiosyncratic geology and prevailing climate of its home terrain. But in addition, it would express all the natural phenomena of its vintage. In a sip, it would evoke the timing of that winter's thaw, the extent of that summer's rain, the prevailing winds, and the frequency of clouds. Yes, a bottle of wine was the ultimate distillation of time and place; a poetic expression of individuality itself. ~ Amor Towles

He looked like a man who had gained confidence through exposure to a hostile environment; like one who no longer owed anything to anyone. ~ Amor Towles

I'm willing to be under anything...as long as it isn't somebody's thumb. ~ Amor Towles

If patience wasn't so easily tested, then it would hardly be a virtue. . . . "Yes, ~ Amor Towles

So before responding, he signaled the Bishop for another glass of champagne. For centuries champagne has been used to launch marriages and ships. Most assume this is because the drink is so intrinsically celebratory; but, in fact, it is used at the onset of these dangerous enterprises because it so capably boosts one's resolve. When ~ Amor Towles

Who would have imagined," he said, "when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia. ~ Amor Towles

After meeting someone by chance and throwing off a few sparks, can there be any substance to the feeling that you've known each other your whole lives? After those first few hours of conversation, can you really be sure that your connection is so uncommon that it belongs outside the bounds of time and convention? ~ Amor Towles

I found myself intent on keeping the memories of the year to myself.
[ ... ]
I didn't want to share them. Because I didn't want to dilute them ~ Amor Towles

I sutured split infinitives and hoisted dangling modifiers and wore out the seam of my best flannel skirt. ~ Amor Towles

The lights flickered. The bands laid down their instruments and the crowds made quiety for the door. ~ Amor Towles

end of every question. ~ Amor Towles

From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. ~ Amor Towles

Anyone who has spent an hour drinking vodka by the glass knows that size has surprisingly little to do with a man's capacity. There are tiny men for whom the limit is seven and giants for whom it is two. For our German friend, the limit appeared to be three. For if the Tolstoy dropped him in a barrel, and the Tchaikovsky set him adrift, then the caviar sent him over the falls. So, having wagged a chastising finger at the Count, he moved to the corner of the bar, laid his head on his arms, and dreamed of the Sugar Plum Fairy. ~ Amor Towles

If only I were there and she were here," she sighed. And there, thought the Count, was a suitable plaint for all mankind. ~ Amor Towles

As long as there have been men on earth, reflected the Count, there have been men in exile. From primitive tribes to the most advanced societies, someone has occasionally been told by his fellow men to pack his bags, cross the border, and never set foot on his native soil again. But perhaps this was to be expected. After all, exile was the punishment that God meted out to Adam in the very first chapter of the human comedy; and that He meted out to Cain a few pages later. Yes, exile was as old as mankind. But the Russians were the first people to master the notion of sending a man into exile at home. ~ Amor Towles

Yes, thought the Count, the world does spin. In fact, it spins on its axis even as it revolves around the sun. And the galaxy turns as well, a wheel within a greater wheel, producing a chime of an entirely different nature than that of a tiny hammer in a clock. And when that celestial chime sounds, perhaps a mirror will suddenly serve its truer purpose - revealing to a man not who he imagines himself to be, but who he has become. ~ Amor Towles

Be careful when choosing what you're proud of
because the world has every intention of using it against you. ~ Amor Towles

For over two centuries (or so historians tell us), it was from the St. Petersburg salons that our country's culture advanced. From those great rooms overlooking the Fontanka Canal, new cuisines, fashions, and ideas all took their first tentative steps into Russian society. ~ Amor Towles

As I've said to you before, we and the Americans will lead the rest of this century because we are the only nations who have learned to brush the past aside instead of bowing before it. But where they have done so in service of their beloved individualism, we are attempting to do so in service of the common good. ~ Amor Towles

I suppose Anne was right when she observed that at any given moment we're all seeking someone's forgiveness. ~ Amor Towles

Dutifully, the Count put the spoon in his mouth. In an instant, there was the familiar sweetness of fresh honey---sunlit, golden, and gay. Given the time of year, the Count was expecting this first impression to be followed by a hint of lilacs from the Alexander Gardens or cherry blossoms from the Garden Ring. But as the elixir dissolved on his tongue, the Count became aware of something else entirely. Rather than the flowering trees of Central Moscow, the honey had a hint of a grassy riverbank.....the trace of a summer breeze......a suggestion of a pergola.....But most of all there was the unmistakable essence of a thousand apple trees in bloom.
"Nizhny Novgorod", he said.
And it was. ~ Amor Towles

Here they resided, two worldviews separated only by Fifth Avenue, facing off until the end of time or the end of Manhattan, whichever came first. ~ Amor Towles

In a state of self-pity, one may retreat from the world in which one has been blessed to live. ~ Amor Towles

I assure you, my dear, were you to play the piano on the moon, I would hear every chord. ~ Amor Towles

True, duels were fought by convention at dawn in isolated locations to ensure the privacy of the gentlemen involved. But were they fought behind ash heaps or in scrapyards? Of course not! They were fought in a clearing among the birch trees with a dusting of snow. Or on the banks of a winding rivulet. Or at the edge of a family estate where the breezes shake the blossoms from the trees. . . . That is, they were fought in settings that one might have expected to see in the second act of an opera. ~ Amor Towles

History has shown charm to be the final ambition of the leisure class. ~ Amor Towles

that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them. The ~ Amor Towles

I love Val. I love my job and my New York. I have no doubts that they were the right choices for me. And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss. ~ Amor Towles

-You've got a ... Lot of books, he said at last.
-it's a sickness.
-Are you ... Seeing anyone for it?
-I'm afraid it's untreatable.
-is this the ... Dewey decimal system?
-No. But it's based on similar principles. Those are the British novelists. The French are in the kitchen. Homer, Virgil, and the other epics are by the tub.
-I take it the ... Transcendental its do better in the sunlight.
-Exactly.
-Do they need much water?
-Not as much as you think. But lots of pruning.
He pointed the volume toward a pile of books under my bed.
-And the ... Mushrooms?
-The Russians.
-Ah.
-Who's winning?
-Not me. ~ Amor Towles

It is our friends who should overestimate our capacities. They should have an exaggerated opinion of our moral fortitude, our aesthetic sensibilities, and our intellectual scope. Why, they should practically imagine us leaping through a window in the nick of time with the works of Shakespeare in one hand and a pistol in the other! ~ Amor Towles

But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most. ~ Amor Towles

But, Audrius, I have never taken the lift in my life! ~ Amor Towles

Yes, the burning of Moscow was especially Russian, my friend. Of that there can be no doubt. Because it was not a discrete event; it was the form of an event. One example plucked from a history of thousands. For as a people, we Russians have proven unusually adept at destroying that which we have created." Perhaps ~ Amor Towles

He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of lucidity - a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of the life we had been meant to lead all along. ~ Amor Towles

Where her mother was prone to express her impatience with the slightest of the world's imperfections, Sofia seemed to presume that if the earth spun awry upon occasion, it was generally a well-intentioned planet. ~ Amor Towles

While the splendors that elude us in youth are likely to receive our casual contempt in adolescence and our measured consideration in adulthood, they forever hold us in their thrall. ~ Amor Towles

Mishka would pine for Katerina the rest of his life! Never again would he walk Nevsky Prospekt, however they chose to rename it, without feeling an unbearable sense of loss. And that is just how it should be. That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love. ~ Amor Towles

Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You've carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are - cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades. ~ Amor Towles

Sometimes," Nina clarified, "everybody tells you something because they are everybody. But why should one listen to everybody? Did everybody write the Odyssey? Did everybody write the Aeneid?" She ~ Amor Towles

That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love. The ~ Amor Towles

Returning to his quarters, he opened the window (though it was only the size of a postage stamp), ~ Amor Towles

Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. ~ Amor Towles

The scientists call it human nature; which is just a fancy term for the God-given flaws we have no intention of giving back. ~ Amor Towles

Perhaps it is a matter of celestial balance," he reflected. "A sort of cosmic equilibrium. Perhaps the aggregate experience of Time is a constant and thus for our children to establish such vivid impressions of this particular June, we must relinquish our claims upon it." "So that they might remember, we must forget," Vasily summed up. ~ Amor Towles

It was a marriage of two minds, of two metropolitan spirits tilting as gently and inescapably toward the future as paper whites tilt toward the sun. And ~ Amor Towles

- Did Eve know? About you and Anne, I mean.
He shook his head wanly. The very definition of wanly. The apotheosis of wanly. ~ Amor Towles

Old times, as my father used to say: If you're not careful, they'll gut you like a fish. ~ Amor Towles

If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us ... then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place. ~ Amor Towles

as we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade. ~ Amor Towles

But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And ~ Amor Towles