A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.

“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. .

For if a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, then a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine.

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 in every possible setting at every possible hour.

“What are we up to here?” “Mathematics.” “I see you are addressing the subject with vigor.” “Professor Lisitsky says that one must wrestle with mathematics the way that one wrestles with a bear.”

I’ll have you know, dear sister, that careless seating has torn asunder the best of marriages and led to the collapse of the longest-standing détentes. In fact, if Paris had not been seated next to Helen when he dined in the court of Menelaus, there never would have been a Trojan War.”

If patience wasn’t so easily tested, then it would hardly be a virtue. . . .

And the objects in our homes? The oriental coffee tables and well-worn desks that have been handed down from generation to generation? Despite being “out of fashion,” not only do they add beauty to our daily lives, they lend material credibility to our presumption that the passing of an era will be glacial. But under certain circumstances, the Count finally acknowledged, this process can occur in the comparative blink of an eye. Popular upheaval, political turmoil, industrial progress—any combination of these can cause the evolution of a society to leapfrog generations, sweeping aside aspects of the past that might otherwise have lingered for decades.

“But there is one more event to relate: Ten years ago tomorrow, while I was biding my time in Paris, my sister died.” “Of a broken heart . . . ?” “Young women only die of broken hearts in novels, Charles. She died of scarlet fever.”

For there is nothing more essential to the enjoyment of a civilized lunch than to have a lively topic of conversation.”

After all, did not wine improve with age? Was it not the passage of years that gave a piece of furniture its delightful patina? When all was said and done, the endeavors that most modern men saw as urgent (such as appointments with bankers and the catching of trains), probably could have waited, while those they deemed frivolous (such as cups of tea and friendly chats) had deserved their immediate attention.

“What is an intention when compared to a plan?”