Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

over thirty years, Twain figured this man had shuttled back and forth so often that he’d traveled the length of the river twenty times over, without leaving his county.

stroll back up Fifth Avenue to his apartment, where we could trade novels and divvy up Hershey bars.

with a friendly laugh he said the news was surprising right up until the moment you heard it.

It’s just that reading is the cheapest form of entertainment. —Sex is the cheapest form of entertainment. —Not in this house.

—Every time I drink before five, she said, I remember why I don’t.

As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion—whether they’re triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment—if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say.

It goes to show that even a man who craves constant approval can attain self-assurance through a little hanky-panky.

It wouldn’t be such a bad place to be born, he’d say, if you never had to live there.

poured myself a gin that was sized to make my apartment seem less depressing and sat in my father’s easy chair.

In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second.

And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come. — Maybe that sounds bleaker than I intended.