All the Sad Young Literary Men Quotes

“She had such control of tone, in her text messages, she was the Edith Wharton of text messaging.”
― Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men

“We hurt one another. We go through life dressing up in new clothes and covering up our true motives. We meet up lightly, we drink rosé wine, and then we give each other pain. We don't want to! What we want to do, what one really wants to do is put out one's hands—like some dancer, in a trance, just put out one's hands—and touch all the people and tell them: I'm sorry. I love you. Thank you for your e-mail. Thank you for coming to see me. Thank you. But we can't. We can't. On the little life raft of Mark only one other person could fit. Just one! And so, thwarted, we inflict pain. That’s what we do. We do not keep each other company. We do not send each other cute text messages. Or, rather, when we do these things, we do them merely to postpone the moment when we'll push these people off, and beat forward, beat forward on our little raft, alone.”
― Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men

“He was getting to be a certain age, he thought. It was the age when his never-to-be-written masterpieces had begun to outweigh the masterpieces he was still going to write.”
― Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men

“Fame—fame was the anti-death. But it seemed to slither from his grasp, seemed to giggle and retreat, seemed to hide behind a huge oak tree and make farting sounds with its hands.”
― Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men

“The sanatorium itself was charming, a group of cabins in the woods, a place for overworked urbanites to feel pleasantly melancholic. A slackertorium.”
― Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men

“To be poor in New York was humiliating, a little; but to be young—to be young was divine.”
― Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men