The Man in the Window Quotes

“I can relate to the novelist Carrie Brown...who described herself as being 'a promiscuous reader.' I'll give almost any book a chance to have its way with me.”
― Nancy Pearl, The Man in the Window

“He [God] chooses not to intervene in the world. Why not? Because he figures he's done enough and the rest is up to us? Or he wouldn't know where to begin? Or because he's in awe of his own miracle? That's how I picture him, his mouth slightly agape, his eyes wide in disbelief.”
― Jon Cohen, The Man in the Window

“He tried sometimes to see in her some extraordinary hidden gift, some thing of great beauty, the pearl that would make her attractive to a man. But if there was a pearl, it lay deeply and irretrievably buried. Where she was not unsightly, she was merely ordinary. Her voice didn’t dazzle, she had no great brains, she cooked but with no particular interest or talent for it, she couldn’t dance and didn’t want to (a wise choice—when Arnie imagined Iris throwing her concentrated weight around a dance floor, his stomach went acidy). Her hair didn’t shine, her feet were not small, the clothes she wore didn’t enhance her qualities, because she had few qualities to enhance. She could be funny at times, and kind at times, but not overwhelmingly, not to a degree that might cause a guy to give her a second look. The best Arnie could come up with for Iris’s main selling point was that she did what she was supposed to do. Which wasn’t so bad really, in a world where you couldn’t depend on anybody. Iris showed up for work on time, she bathed regularly with sensible soap, and she paid her bills. Arnie doubted there was anyone out there staying up nights fantasizing about a woman like that.”
― Jon Cohen, The Man in the Window

“flourished had Lucy Jameson not ordered a Pepsi-”
― Jon Cohen, The Man in the Window

“What mother could abandon the dream that lived inside her, deny the one thing in this world she knows as certain, which is the absolute and everlasting beauty of her child?”
― Jon Cohen, The Man in the Window