Table for Two

by Amor Towles

In fact, so satisfactory was their life, had Pushkin uncovered an old bronze lantern while tilling the fields and unleashed from it an ancient genie with three wishes to grant, Pushkin wouldn’t have known what to wish for.

But if Irina was quiet, she was quiet the way a heated skillet is quiet—in the moments before you drop in the fat.

eighth of October,

Great day 🥰💍

“Dismissed!” shouted Irina that night in their little apartment. “How does one get fired from Communism!”

The weather! I hear you exclaim with a roll of the eyes. This is one of his favorite conversations!?

For to serve the ones we love and receive their approval in return, need life be any more complicated than that?

For what had caused Timothy to delay the start of his novel was not a desire to investigate methodologies, but a fear so dark and disturbing it could barely be acknowledged—the fear that he had no story to tell.

How

could one expect to craft a novel of grace and significance when one’s greatest inconveniences had included the mowing of lawns in spring, the raking of leaves in autumn, and the shoveling of snow in winter?

Thus, while once we needed to marry an heiress or found a railroad in order to change our lot, today an extra fifty dollars a week will allow us to take one more step up the ladder of well-being to a tier where the soups are a little more tasty, the shirts a little more stylish, and the living rooms a little more exposed to natural light.

Sometimes it seems that for a man nothing is more exciting than a number. It’s the boy in them, I suppose.

No one is born pompous. To attain that state requires a certain amount of planning and effort.

For there is no remembrance of former things. And neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.