Jay McInerney > Quotes

“The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.”
― Jay McInerney, The Last of the Savages

“Everything becomes symbol and irony when you've been betrayed”
― Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

“Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what we're afraid of is about the width of an eyelash.”
― Jay McInerney

“It's like, you can't trust anybody, and if somebody you know doesn't fuck you over it's just because the price of selling you down the river was never high enough.”
― Jay McInerney, The Story Of My Life

“I'd like to have the kind of house someday where a carousel horse wouldn't be out of place in the living room.”
― Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

“Your heartbreak is just another version of the same old story.”
― Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

“Things happen, people change,' is what Amanda said. For her that covered it. You wanted an explanation, and ending that would assign blame and dish up justice. You considered violence and you considered reconciliation . But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name.”
― Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

“Bottles of wine aren't like paintings. At some point you have to consume them. The object in life is to die with no bottles of wine in your cellar. To drink your last bottle of wine and go to sleep that night and not wake up.”
― Jay McInerney

“Great minds sink alike, right?”
― Jay McInerney, The Story Of My Life

“a pockmarked boy with a scraggy ponytail and four tiny rings in his right ear leaned against the wall of the armory, holding his dog on a leash, a sign hanging from his neck: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PET MY DOG. IT MAY MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER.”
― Jay McInerney, The Good Life

“Taste ... is a matter of taste (Tad Allagash)”
― Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

“He looks out the window at the falling snow, then turns and takes his wife in his arms, feeling grateful to be here even as he wonders what he is going to do with his life in strictly practical terms. For years he had trained himself to do one thing, and he did it well, but he doesn't know whether he wants to keep doing it for the rest of his life, for that matter, whether anyone will let him. He is still worrying when they go to bed.

Feeling his wife's head nesting in the pillow below his shoulder, he is almost certain that they will find ways to manage. They've been learning to get by with less, and they'll keep learning. It seems to him as if they're taking a course in loss lately. And as he feels himself falling asleep he has an insight he believes is important, which he hopes he will remember in the morning, although it is one of those thoughts that seldom survive translation to the language of daylight hours: knowing that whatever plenty befalls them together or separately in the future, they will become more and more intimate with loss as the years accumulate, friends dying or slipping away undramatically into the crowded past, memory itself finally flickering and growing treacherous toward the end; knowing that even the children who may be in their future will eventually school them in the pain of growth and separation, as their own parents and mentors die off and leave them alone in the world, shivering at the dark threshold.”
― Jay McInerney, Brightness Falls

“I'd urge you to try German Riesling because it's delicious, but I fear you'll be more impressed if I tell you it's cutting-edge. That, after all, is what we want to know-- what's now and happening. (Do you really think clunky square-toed shoes make your feet look better than those with slimming, tapered toes? You just wear them because that's what fashion dictates, you slut.)”
― Jay McInerney, A Hedonist in the Cellar: Adventures in Wine

“Eventually you ascend the stairs to the street. You think of Plato's pilgrims climbing out of the cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are, and you wonder if it is possible to change in this life. Being with a philosopher makes you think.”
― Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

“She said that certain facts are accessible only from one point of view – the point of view of the creature who experiences them. You think she meant that the only shoes we can ever wear are our own. Meg can’t imagine what it’s like for you to be you, she can only imagine herself being you”
― Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City