Manhattan Beach Quotes

“How do you know a gangster?” “Usually, the room goes a little quiet when he walks in.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Cheating is like a girl’s maidenhead. Doesn’t matter if she’s done it once or a hundred times; she’s ruined just the same.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“The best possible outcome of marriage was a wealthy, childless widowhood.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Each time Anna moved from her father’s world to her mother and Lydia’s, she felt as if she’d shaken free of one life for a deeper one. And when she returned to her father, holding his hand as they ventured out into the city, it was her mother and Lydia she shook off, often forgetting them completely. Back and forth she went, deeper—deeper still—until it seemed there was no place further down she could go. But somehow there always was. She had never reached the bottom.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“since the Depression, we bankers have had the leisure and . . . solitude, you might say, to think about the future. The Civil War left us with a federal government. The Great War made us a creditor nation. As bankers, we must anticipate what changes this war will thrust upon us.”
[…] The old man leaned forward and took a long breath. “I see the rise of this country to a height no country has occupied, ever,” he said quietly. “Not the Romans. Not the Carolingians. Not Genghis Khan or the Tatars or Napoleon’s France. Hah! You’re all looking at me like I’ve one foot in the funny farm. How is that possible? you ask. Because our dominance won’t arise from subjugating peoples. We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Men said “Girls are weak” when in fact girls made them weak.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Their insularity made him envious—not just of the men but all three of them. They were working together, two men and a girl, with evident ease. Even after the diving suit was on and she no longer looked like a girl, he was resentful of their shared knowledge, their nomenclature and expertise.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“I like to be near water whenever possible, don’t you?” he said, gazing into the dark. “Melville put it best: ‘Nothing will content men but the extremest limit of the land’—but that’s not it, I can’t recall the quote. It’s in our nature to seek out the edge. Even on a golf course”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“You know the expression,” Eddie said. “ ‘Don’t write if you can talk, and don’t talk if you can nod.’ ” Styles was delighted. “A mick said that.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Eddie had never noticed how much of his own speech derived from the sea, from “keeled over” to “learning the ropes” to “catching the drift” to “freeloader” to “gripe” to “brace up” to “taken aback” to “leeway” to “low profile” to “the bitter end,” or the very last link on a chain.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Lust made an idiot of everyone it touched—Dexter felt stupidity shrouding his head like a hood in the shape of a dunce’s cap.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“he’d won by playing dirty—worse than losing.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“He was of no more consequence than an empty cigarette packet.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Trouble is,” Mr. Q. breathed, “you open a channel . . . now it exists. Hard to regulate what . . . passes through or . . . what direction it . . . moves.”

Dexter said nothing. What the hell was he getting at?

“This may be your . . . blind spot.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“You know the expression,” Eddie said. “ ‘Don’t write if you can talk, and don’t talk if you can nod.’ ” Styles was delighted. “A mick said that.” Eddie winked.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“It had been years since she’d fabricated a story from whole cloth. It brought a sense of returning to an earlier time when she was questioned more often and had fewer evasions at her disposal. Besides, she thought, looking into Rose’s relieved and joyful face, people practically told you the lies they wanted to hear.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“It only hurts at first,” she said. “After a while you can’t feel anything.” Mr. Styles grinned as if her reply were a ball he’d taken physical pleasure in catching. “Words to live by,” he said,”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“She’d never been good at banter; it was like a skipping rope whose rhythm she couldn’t master enough to jump in with confidence. The war seemed not to exist here, despite the presence of officers in uniform.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“As she worked, Anna glanced occasionally at the Flossie Flirt doll wedged at the end of a shelf. She had wanted one so violently two years ago that some of her desperation seemed to have broken off and stayed inside her. It was strange and painful to discover that old longing now, in this place.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Let me tell you something, dearie: the world is a closed door to an unwed mother and her illegitimate child. If”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“corrupt interloper bluffing her way through her life.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Problems he couldn’t solve made him angry.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“We work in the realm of the impression.” Nell hailed a taxi and directed the driver to East”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“He liked the thought that his own power would one day be refined into translucence, with no memory of the blood and earth that had generated it.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“She could feel the logic of mechanical parts in her fingertips; this came so naturally that she could only think that other people didn’t really try.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“He hungered for a sense of progress, of new things approaching while old familiar ones receded. It seemed far too long since he’d had that sensation.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“and proffered her services. She could feel the logic of mechanical parts in her fingertips; this came so naturally that she could only think that other people didn’t really try.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“I do not talk this way to everyone. Men so far outside my intellectual scope do not normally crave extensive and repeated interactions, as you do. Your reasons for persisting in this effort elude me, I confess. I could speculate, of course, but that would be a fool’s errand—in part because it would imply that our inner lives had the slightest modicum of solidarity—which I more than doubt—but also because it would indicate that I care one jot about what moves and motivates you, Third, which I do not.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach

“Not enough has been written about the treachery of middle life,” the old man mused, his voice carrying over the wind. “Dante went to hell to escape it, and I’ve seen plenty of other men do the same, metaphorically speaking.”
― Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach