A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

It attested to a precision of purpose and the promise of adventure.

Songs that made you reel and spin until you lost your bearings not only between the parlor and the salon, but between heaven and earth.

wise man celebrates what he can.

But the Russians were the first people to master the notion of sending a man into exile at home.

expansion of the Criminal Code to allow the arrest of anyone even countenancing dissension,

Always to shine, to shine everywhere, to the very depths of the last days . . .

it created by fanciful people who tire of repetition even more quickly than they tire of being told what to do, it

The musicals were “pastries designed to placate the impoverished with daydreams of unattainable bliss.”

“Hollywood is the single most dangerous force in the history of class struggle.”

America in which corruption and cruelty lounged on the couch; in which justice was a beggar and kindness a fool; in which loyalties were fashioned from paper, and self-interest was fashioned from steel.

“One must make ends meet,” confirmed Audrius matter-of-factly, “or meet one’s end.”

For if serenity should be a hallmark of maturity, then impetuousness should be a hallmark of youth.

What sort of Divinity, he seemed to be thinking, would devise a world in which an aging man’s malady afflicts the very attribute that has set him apart from his fellow men and elevated him in the eyes of all?

burn brighter with the electricity from the first nuclear power plant in the world.

For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.