Chance Quotes

“People want miracles. Sometimes the only miracle is, I take your hand. That’s the miracle.” A”
― Kem Nunn, Chance: A Novel

“It was how it had been with the madman among the tombs, that their number was legion, far in excess at any rate if the number listed on the back of the door as the room's maximum occupancy.”
― Kem Nunn, Chance

“History is coming for the empire.”
― Kem Nunn, Chance

“Chance imagined himself no stranger to the machinations by which people went about establishing the architecture of their own imprisonment, the citadels from whose basement windows one might on occasion hear their cries. Like Houdini, we construct the machinery of our entrapment from which we must finally escape or die.”
― Kem Nunn, Chance: A Novel

“Words are what I have and it's the words as words that interest me.”
― Kem Nunn, Chance

“He was aware of the pulse in her wrist, warm against the heel of his palm. He was aware of his desire, taking him by the throat.”
― Kem Nunn, Chance: A Novel

“She was staring out a window and he was taken, as he had been in the bookstore, by her length and line.”
― Kem Nunn, Chance: A Novel

“He found the big man outside in the alley, seated on an overturned crate, a bag from some local fast food joint at his side, a large Diet Coke in one hand and a copy of The Grapes of Wrath in the other. He looked up as Chance moved to join him. “I’ll be all around in the dark,” D said by way of greeting. He did not consult the book. “Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise, and livin’ in the houses they built . . . I’ll be there too.” He paused. “I may have left out a couple,” he said. He looked at the book.”
― Kem Nunn, Chance: A Novel

“It all took longer than expected and the truck a piece of shit with blown shocks and springs poking through vinyl seat covers and the late light drawing out the shadows in Chance’s neighborhood by the time he and D came finally bouncing up from the Great Highway in the ancient rig, one of many as the afternoon rush hour he’d been hoping to beat lurched into full swing with lines of cars at each and every intersection and jaywalking children with backpacks and cell phones and Chinese workmen unloading fish trucks at competing corner groceries and tattooed teenagers with funny hats on clattering skateboards.”
― Kem Nunn, Chance: A Novel