A Calling for Charlie Barnes Quotes

“Let’s have a closer look at Sue. Appearance-wise, Jerry’s mother was a dark dream with full lips and almond eyes; fashion-wise, she spared no expense but looked as conservative as all the rest; in terms of morals she was entirely conventional; in personality a flirt; in outlook a skeptic; in disposition a bleak and dire depressive; in political mind-set more progressive than most; in matters of sex, boldly forward, then discreetly withholding; she was mercurial at parties and dances (a charmer one night, a mute the next); in love a total slave, but as an object of a man’s desire, she was a merciless and cunning manipulator. If her kindness was subject to moods, she had her table manners down cold, and her telephone etiquette was impeccable.”
― Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes

“a kaleidoscope of narrative more than any coherent story.”
― Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes

“The child of divorce and the parent without primary custody know these interstitial places well: the curb, the corridor, the terminal parking lot. It is there where you embrace, you shed tears, you thank God for reuniting you -- or curse God for tearing you asunder once more. All the while, the elevator dings, the custodian sweeps up, the traffic cop urges you to get a move on.”
― Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes

“Real life makes for good novels because it's lived as a bunch of lies, and because fictions of one kind or another are the only things worth living for.”
― Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes

“In a private moment of self-reflection, a man confronts the farce that he is. All his worst instincts, habits of mind, predictable appetites and easily parodied past actions crystallize in that moment into a punch line that prevails above all his refinements and respectability. He is a human exaggeration - if not to his associates or loved ones, then to himself. Then the moment passes. He ceases looking at himself in the mirror, turns on the tap and splashes water on his face. He returns to flesh and blood, to power incarnate, to possibility. He washes his hands of the past and leaves that temporary station where he was briefly nothing but a joke and walks out again, into the future.”
― Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes

“Narcissism, justly lamented for doing so much damage, especially within the family unit, could also work miracles, as when a fundamentally apathetic collection of illiterates gets wind that they appear as characters in a book and transforms overnight into a bunch of rabbinical scholars.”
― Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes

“what was life without appetite?”
― Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes

“The worst thing that could have happened to Icarus was not, in fact, his fiery end but his decision at the last second to go by Greyhound, and to start a nice family in Cleveland.”
― Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes