The City of Mirrors Quotes

“All his life he had wanted to be known by just one person. That’s what love was, he decided. Love was being known.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“For the first time in my life, I felt the pain of missing people I had not yet left.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“All stories end when they have returned to their beginnings.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“Consider the species known as man. We lie, we cheat, we want what others have and take it; we make war upon each other and the earth; we harvest lives in multitudes. We have mortgaged the planet and spent the cash on trifles. We may have loved, but never well enough. We never truly knew ourselves. We forgot the world; now it has forgotten us.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“I have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.' That's T.S. Eliot, in case you were wondering. An oldie but a goodie. When it came to existential exhaustion, the man was one smart cookie.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“A lot of life, Michael had learned, came down to trying to fix things that weren’t fixable.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“What is home but a place where you are truly known?”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“How wonderful to be read to. To be carried from this world and into another, born away on words.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“Behind every great hatred is a love story.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“The heart, once broken, stayed broken.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“Maybe just being alive, and having someone to love who loved you back, was enough.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“Maybe that was what getting older taught you, when you looked in the mirror and saw the passage of time in your face, when you looked at your sleeping daughter and saw the girl you once were and would never be again. The world was real and you were in it, a brief part but still a part, and if you were lucky, and maybe even if you weren’t, the things you’d done for love would be remembered.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“History is more than data, more than facts, more than science and scholarship. These things are merely the means to a greater end. History is a story—the story of ourselves. Where do we come from? How have we survived? How can we avoid the mistakes of the past? Do we matter, and if we do, what is our proper place upon the earth?”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“All things found their ends.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“Who is the monster now?”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“Since our first, furry ancestor scraped flint on stone and banished night with fire, we have climbed heavenward on a ladder made of our own arrogance. But”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“What was childhood if not a passage from light to dark, of the soul’s slow drowning in an ocean of ordinary matter? During”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“That was the heart of the matter. A new world was coming; a new world was already here. Maybe that was what getting older taught you, when you looked in the mirror and saw the passage of time in your face, when you looked at your sleeping daughter and saw the girl you once were and would never be again. The world was real and you were in it, a brief part but still a part, and if you were lucky, and maybe even if you weren’t, the things you’d done for love would be remembered.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“Behind every great hatred is a love story. For I am a man who has known and tasted love. I say “a man” because that is how I know myself. Look at me, and what do you see? Do I not take the form of a man? Do I not feel as you do, suffer as you do, love as you do, mourn as you do? What is the essence of a man, if not these things?”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“All things passed away. Even the earth itself, the sky and the river and the stars he loved, would, one day, come to the end of their existence. But it was not a thing to be feared; such was the bittersweet beauty of life. He”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“City of memories, city of mirrors.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“He wonders if this is a lack within himself. Is there a part of the brain from which love comes that in his case has drastically malfunctioned? The world is awash in love—on the radio, in movies, in the pages of novels. Romantic love is the common cultural narrative, yet he seems immune to it. Thus, though he has yet to taste the pain that comes with love, he has experienced pain of a different, related sort: the fear of facing a life without it.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“She thought she should take a moment to pray. But, as she was holding a loaded rifle, conventional prayer did not seem entirely suitable. Sister Peg hoped that God would help her, but it was her belief that He much preferred for people to attend to themselves. Life was a test; it was up to you to pass it or not. She raised the gun to her clavicle and angled one eye down the length of the barrel.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“History is more than data, more than facts, more than science and scholarship. These things are merely the means to a greater end. History is a story—the story of ourselves. Where do we come from? How have we survived? How can we avoid the mistakes of the past? Do we matter, and if we do, what is our proper place upon the earth? I shall put the question another way: Who are we?”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“That's what love was, he decided. Love was being known.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“There was, Alicia realized, a single hour that all the days since your birth pointed you toward. What you thought was a maze of choices, all the possibilities of what your life might become, was, in fact, a series of steps you took along a road, and when you reached your destination and looked back, only one path—the one chosen for you—was visible.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“To know and be known: that was the final desire, the heart of love.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“One day you have Einstein, puzzling over the theory of relativity, the next you’ve got the Manhattan Project and a big hole in the ground.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“There exists for each of us a geographical fulcrum, a place so saturated with memory that within its precinct the past is always present.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors