The Lincoln Highway

by Amor Towles

under the shadow of his father’s failure.

But I am not willing to believe that Jesus Christ Our Savior—who at the drop of a hat would heal a leper or restore sight to the blind—would turn his back on a woman who was taking care of a household.

Whom I blame is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and every other man who’s served as priest or preacher since.

Time is that which God uses to separate the idle from the industrious. For time is a mountain and upon seeing its steep incline, the idle will lie down

I do it because it’s old-fashioned. Just because something’s new doesn’t

Nope, I said to myself while climbing into bed and switching off the light, there is no kindness in any of that. For kindness begins where necessity ends.

Emmett was raised to hold no man in disdain. To hold another man in disdain, his father would say, presumed that you knew so much about his lot, so much about his intentions, about his actions both public and private that you could rank his character against your own without fear of misjudgment.

And this is a wonderful thing. Because to aspire, to fall in love, to stumble as we do and yet soldier on, at some level we must believe that what we are going through has never been experienced quite as we have experienced it.

most of the time he’d rather not have a moment to himself. Moments with other people, he found, were much more likely to be filled with laughter and surprises than moments with oneself. And moments with oneself were more likely to circle inward toward some thought that one didn’t want to be having in the first place.

If we are asked to apply ourselves to that which is before us, she would say, we are less likely to