The Flight Portfolio Quotes

“Varian sat silent for a moment, his hands between his knees. "All my life I've enjoyed perfect privilege," he said. "American, rich, Protestant, Harvard-educated. I could walk down the street anywhere and feel, God help me, like a master.”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“There are moments when the filament of time bends, loops, blurs. The present becomes permeable; the past leaps forward and insists itself upon us without warning. The orderly progression of our days reveals itself to be a lie, and the sense making brain flounders. What was he supposed to call this impossibility that insisted itself before him as reality? A hallucination? Deja vu, that cheap cinematic trick of the mind?”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“If we could pin down the moments when our lives bifurcate into before and after-if we could pause the progression of milliseconds, catch ourselves at the point before we slip over the precipice-if we could choose to remain suspended on time-amber, our lives intact, our hearts unbroken, our foreheads unlined, our nights full of undisturbed sleep-would we slip, or would we choose the amber?”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“Nothing at all to change: what a thing to want in the midst of war.”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“Borsalino.”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“Bravo, Monsieur Grant,” Breton said, and everyone applauded. “A secret history.”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“the lap and luff of the sea on the ash-blue shore.”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“It's no small matter to cross an ocean,"Chagall said. "More can be lost than canvas and paint. An artist must bear witness, Monsieur Fry. He cannot turn away, even if he wished to."

"An artist cannot bear witness if he's dead.”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“But was it cowardice to call out a lie, to insist on truth?”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“This is the Centre Americain de Secours. What is more American than wild hope?”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“It all seemed grossly unfair. He wanted nothing at all to change”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“At times, circumstances conspire to make us believe the lies we tell ourselves. Everything- the weather, the season, the fall of light- sets the stage for our play; we find ourselves, instead of acting, becoming the characters, moving into a reality in which we're inseparable from our roles.”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“The names of the list mean something. Every one. They mean something to me."
"Everyone means something to someone.”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“puerile passion.”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“Gide,”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

“with her husband as she”
― Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio