The Star of Istanbul Quotes

“I figured how it maybe was a sign that a man and a woman were actually becoming something together when you could be comfortable in long silences.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“I haven’t turned into Richard Harding Davis.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“they were Muslims who had a long history not unlike Christian history—namely, marching into countries where a bunch of folks thought differently than you about life and God and you ground your righteous heel into their throats. I was an infidel. But not inside here. In this house—and on the most threadbare couch in the most desolate, rubble-strewn vacant lot—coffee and tobacco were the common sacraments of the whole human race.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“the minarets now seemed to me as profuse in Istanbul as smokestacks in Pittsburgh.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“I could see through it, but that didn’t make the more difficult thing any less difficult. What did help, in this particular moment, was the sharp nip of pain on my fingertips. The match was still burning.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“Which reminds me,” I said. “You got my pistol?” “Smith.” “And Wesson?” “Ben Smith.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“I’d been lucky never to have my nose rearranged. It was still on the straight and narrow,”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“vanilla and turf smells of old books.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“a face more suited for making book than selling books.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“Brilliantine-assaulted hair”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“Captain Turner, from my two encounters with him and from this present sailing strategy, seemed to me a classic example of military hierarchy: a guy who was mediocre and competent at some lower level but who had inevitably been promoted to a rank and responsibility where he was finally stupid and incompetent.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“She bowed. A long, slow, stiff bow from the waist. The bow of a Prussian officer in a social setting with civilians, feeling uncomfortable, waiting to leave.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“who no doubt honored a keen memory as a sign—bogus though it was in and of itself—of intelligence:”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“Your feature work is as good as anything by Richard Harding Davis.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“Mr. Cobb,” he said. And in just those two words his Boston Back Bay accent rolled over me as dramatically as if he were one of my mother’s leading men making an entrance, the “Mister” coasting on a schwa to a vanished “r”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“The lamb,” she said. I didn’t understand at first. Things had suddenly gotten serious enough that my first thought was that she was segueing into speaking of religion. But it was simply dinner.”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul

“uninflected silence”
― Robert Olen Butler, The Star of Istanbul