John > John's Quotes

“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.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“...be careful when choosing what you're proud of--because the world has every intention of using it against you.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion....if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I've discovered in life. And you can have it, since it's been of no use to me.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us...then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee. Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You've carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are - cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Because when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that's about as good a gift as chance intends to offer.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“It is a bit of a cliché to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time--by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still?

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 shape our lives for decades to come.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“I told him I'd always found the description a little too long on adjectives and a little too short on specifics.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“I love Val. I love my job and my New York. I have no doubts that they were the right choices for me. And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“The romantic interplay that we were having wasn't the real game--it was a modified version of the game. It was a version invented for two friends so that they can get some practice and pass the time divertingly while they eat in the station for their train to arrive”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“I suppose we don't rely on comparison enough to tell us whom it is that we are talking to. We give people the liberty of fashioning themselves in the moment-a span of time that is so much more manageable, stageable, controllable than is a lifetime.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“I found myself intent on keeping the memories of the year to myself.
[...]
I didn't want to share them. Because I didn't want to dilute them”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“There is is again, that slight stinging sensation of the cheeks. It's our body's light speed response to the world showing us up. And it's one of life's most unpleasant feelings, leaving one to wonder what evolutionary purpose it could possible serve.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“But one night near the end, as I was sitting at his bedside trying to entertain him with an anecdote about some nincompoop with whom I worked, out of the blue he shared a reflection which seemed such a non sequitur that I attributed it to delirium. Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee. Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice. Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane—in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath—she has probably put herself in unnecessary danger. What my father was trying to tell me, as he neared the conclusion of his own course, was that this risk should not be treated lightly: One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Most New Yorkers spent their lives somewhere between the fruit cart and the fifth floor. To see the city from a few hundred feet above the riffraff was pretty celestial. We gave the moment its due.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“There is an of-quoted passage in Walden, in which Thoreau exhorts us to find our pole star and to follow it unwaveringly as would a sailor or a fugitive slave. It's a thrilling sentiment - one so obviously worthy of our aspirations. But even if you had the discipline to maintain the true course, the real problem, it has always seemed to me, is how to know in which part of the heavens your star resides”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Sometimes, it sure seems that’s what life intends. After all, it’s basically like a centrifuge that spins every few years casting proximate bodies in disparate directions. And when the spinning stops, almost before we can catch our breath, life crowds us with a calendar of new concerns.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“It was a marriage of two minds, of two ... spirits tilting as gently and inescapably toward the future as paper whites tilt toward the sun.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“For wasn't it just a matter of time before we crossed each other's path?
Despite all the hoopla, wasn't Manhattan just ten miles long and a mile or two wide? So in the days that followed, I kept an eye out, I looked for his figure on the street corners and in the coffee shops. I imagined coming home and having him emerge once more from the doorway across the street. But as the weeks turned into months, and the months into years, this sense of anticipation waned, and slowly but surely, I stopped expecting to see him in a crowd.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“To have even one year when you're presented with choices that can alter your circumstances, your character, your course- that's by the grace of God alone. And it shouldn't come without a price.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“He looked like a man who had gained confidence through exposure to a hostile environment; like one who no longer owed anything to anyone.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion....if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“at any given moment, we’re all seeking someone’s forgiveness.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“For the most part in the course of our daily lives we abide the abundant evidence that no such universal justices exists. Like a cart horse, we plod along the cobblestones dragging our master's wares with our heads down and our blinders in place, waiting patiently for the next cube of sugar. But there are certain times when chance suddenly provides the justice that Agatha Christie promises. We look around at the characters cat in our own lives - our heiresses and gardeners, our vicars and nannies, our late-arriving guests who are not exactly what they seem - and discover before the end of the weekend all assembled will get their just deserts.

But when we do so, we rarely remember to count ourselves among their company.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“most people have respect for a direct and well-timed question.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“But as the weeks turned into months, and the months into years, this sense of anticipation waned, and slowly, but surely, I stopped expecting to see him in a crowd. Swept along by the currents of my own ambitions and commitments, my daily life laid the groundwork for the grace of forgetting”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility