Top 100 Amor Towles Quotes
#1. For when life makes it impossible for a man to pursue his dreams, he will connive to pursue them anyway.
Amor Towles
#3. Either way, he figured a cup of coffee would hit the spot. For what is more versatile? As at home in tin as it is in Limoges, coffee can energize the industrious at dawn, calm the reflective at noon, or raise the spirits of the beleagured in the middle of the night.
Amor Towles
#4. True, it would not be a new venture for him. But need it be? Could one possibly accuse him of nostalgia or idleness, of wasting his time simply because he had read the story two or three times before?
Amor Towles
#5. Well, if getting to the bottom is what is called for, I am sure there is no man better for the job.
Amor Towles
#6. For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise - that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.
Amor Towles
#7. By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End The
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#8. That's the problem with living in New York. You've got no New York to run away to.
Amor Towles
#9. A king fortifies himself with a castle," observed the Count, "a gentleman with a desk." As
Amor Towles
#10. Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence--one that was on intimate terms with a comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard.
Amor Towles
#11. What was your favorite day of the year? The summer solstice. June twenty-first. The longest day of the year.
Amor Towles
#12. I'm willing to be under anything...as long as it isn't somebody's thumb.
Amor Towles
#13. For the next few minutes, there was a thorough rehashing of the courses (That meat was delicious. The sauce was perfect. And ooh that chocolate mousse.) This was a social nicety that seemed more prevalent the higher you climbed the social ladder and the less your hostess cooked.
Amor Towles
#14. From bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time. Such is the fate of iron ore.
Amor Towles
#15. You can always tell a rich New York girl from a poor one. And you can tell a rich Boston girl from a poor one. After all, that's what accents and manners are there for. But to the native New Yorker, the midwestern girls all looked and sounded the same. Sure, the
Amor Towles
#16. Manners are not like bonbons, Nina. You may not choose the ones that suit you best; and you certainly cannot put the half-bitten ones back in the box. . . ." Nina
Amor Towles
#17. - Did Eve know? About you and Anne, I mean.
He shook his head wanly. The very definition of wanly. The apotheosis of wanly.
Amor Towles
#18. For if a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, then a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine. Rising
Amor Towles
#19. If only someone had told me about the confidence-boosting nature of guns, I'd have been shooting them all my life.
Amor Towles
#20. The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our
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#21. If you could relive one year in your life, which one would it be? [ ... ] The upcoming one.
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#22. But Fate would not have the reputation it has if it simply did what it seemed it would do.
Amor Towles
#23. She could have made a favourable impression on someone if she hadn't acted as though at any moment the city was going to step on her
Amor Towles
#24. So while dueling may have begun as a response to high crimes - to treachery, treason, and adultery - by 1900 it had tiptoed down the stairs of reason, until they were being fought over the tilt of a hat, the duration of a glance, or the placement of a comma. In
Amor Towles
#25. An act of generosity rarely ends a man's responsibilities toward another; it tends instead to begin them.
Amor Towles
#26. sometimes everybody tells you something because it is true." "sometimes," nina clarified, "everybody tells you something because they are everybody...
Amor Towles
#27. Learning dance steps was the sorry Saturday night pursuit of every boardinghouse girl in America
Amor Towles
#28. On those we love:
"Every year that passed, it seemed a little more of her had slipped away; and I began to fear that one day I would come to foget her altogether. But the truth is: No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.
Amor Towles
#29. Life is every bit as devious as Death. It too can wear a hooded coat. It too can slip into town, lurk in an alley, or wait in the back of a tavern.
Amor Towles
#30. I suppose we don't rely on comparison enough to tell us whom it is that we are talking to. We give people the liberty of fashioning themselves in the moment-a span of time that is so much more manageable, stageable, controllable than is a lifetime.
Amor Towles
#31. I knew too well the nature of life's distractions and enticements-how the piecemeal progress of our hopes and ambitions commands our undivided attention, reshaping the ethereal into the tangible, and commitments into compromises.
Amor Towles
#32. If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us ... then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place.
Amor Towles
#33. To what end, he wondered, had the Divine created the stars in heaven to fill a man with feelings of inspiration one day and insignificance the next?
Amor Towles
#34. Yes, a ghost, thought the Count, as he moved silently down the hall. Like Hamlet's father roaming the ramparts of Elsinore after the midnight watch . . . Or like Akaky Akakievich, that forsaken spirit of Gogol's who in the wee hours haunted the Kalinkin Bridge in search of his stolen coat . . . Why
Amor Towles
#35. Such is the magic of Christmas in childhood, thought the Count a little wistfully, that a single gift can provide one with endless hours of adventure while not even requiring one to leave one's house.
Amor Towles
#36. For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.
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#37. For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.
Amor Towles
#38. It was a sweet display of self-confidence, as he no longer felt the need to entertain me or to advertise his claim on my attentions. It goes to show that even a man who craves constant approval can attain self-assurance through a little hanky-panky.
Amor Towles
#39. in the ballroom of the Metropol Hotel on the twenty-first of June 1926, was the heretic, Galileo of Galilei, vindicated by a ping, a splat, a smash, a thunk, a thump, and a thud. Of
Amor Towles
#40. ..the Zimmers sharpening their sarcasm. Over an early dinner, they chipped away at each other like little Michelangelos, placing every stroke of the mallet with care and devotion.
Amor Towles
#41. For over two centuries (or so historians tell us), it was from the St. Petersburg salons that our country's culture advanced. From those great rooms overlooking the Fontanka Canal, new cuisines, fashions, and ideas all took their first tentative steps into Russian society.
Amor Towles
#42. As the sign over the cash register made clear, the three ways you could get your coffee at Chester's were sweetened, unsweetened, and somewhere else.
Amor Towles
#43. Long had he believed that a gentleman should turn to a mirror with a sense of distrust. For rather than being tools of self-discovery, mirrors tended to be tools of self-deceit.
Amor Towles
#44. In the doleful court behind my building a patchwork of windows was all that separated me from a hundred muted lives being led without mystery or menace or magic.
Amor Towles
#45. Because the Bolsheviks, who were so intent upon recasting the future from a mold of their own making, would not rest until every last vestige of his Russia had been uprooted, shattered, or erased. Returning
Amor Towles
#46. And this must be especially so, when those with newfound power are men who distrust any form of hesitation or nuance, and who prize self-assurance above all. For
Amor Towles
#47. Sometimes," Nina clarified, "everybody tells you something because they are everybody. But why should one listen to everybody? Did everybody write the Odyssey? Did everybody write the Aeneid?" She
Amor Towles
#48. The Count took pride in wearing a well-tailored jacket; but he took greater pride in knowing that a gentleman's presence was best announced by his bearing, his remarks, and his manners. Not by the cut of his coat. Yes,
Amor Towles
#49. Alas, Tis true that words are queer
And yet my son, you need not fear.
For in this volume can be seen
All English words and what they mean.
(about a Websters dictionary wrapped in a pink bow)
Amor Towles
#50. ...the book had been written with winter nights in mind. Without a doubt, it was a book for when the birds had flown south, the wood was stacked by the fireplace, and the fields were white with snow; that is, for when one had no desire to venture out and one's friends had no desire to venture in.
Amor Towles
#51. he had decided after careful consideration to join a monastery and take an eternal vow of silence. Immediately. Without a moment's delay. Or, as soon as they'd had lunch. "Do
Amor Towles
#52. But, Audrius, I have never taken the lift in my life!
Amor Towles
#53. as we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade.
Amor Towles
#54. Having acknowledged that a man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them, the
Amor Towles
#55. the manner of Prince Tetrakov, was now touring the room, shaking
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#56. Returning to his quarters, he opened the window (though it was only the size of a postage stamp),
Amor Towles
#57. Before one travels abroad, it is best to have a simple, heartwarming soup from home, so that one can recall it fondly should one ever happen to feel a little
Amor Towles
#58. In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquium, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world's oldest problems in its newest nomenclature.
Amor Towles
#59. - I probably shouldn't tell you this, I said.
- Kay-Kay, those are my six favorite words in the English language.
Amor Towles
#60. A slouching posture tends to suggest a certain laziness of character as well as a lack of interest in others. Whereas an upright position can confirm a sense of self-possession and a quality of engagement.
Amor Towles
#61. To have even one year when you're presented with choices that can alter your circumstances, your character, your course- that's by the grace of God alone. And it shouldn't come without a price.
Amor Towles
#62. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. But
Amor Towles
#63. Old times, as my father used to say: If you're not careful, they'll gut you like a fish.
Amor Towles
#64. It was a marriage of two minds, of two ... spirits tilting as gently and inescapably toward the future as paper whites tilt toward the sun.
Amor Towles
#65. History has shown charm to be the final ambition of the leisure class.
Amor Towles
#66. I've come to realize that however blue my circumstances, if after finishing a chapter of a Dickens novel I feel a miss-my-stop-on-the-train sort of compulsion to read on, then everything is probably going to be just fine.
Amor Towles
#67. - Bucky dear, his wife warned, you're slurring your words. - Slurring is the cursive of speech, I observed.
Amor Towles
#69. coffee can energize the industrious at dawn, calm the reflective at noon, or raise the spirits of the beleagured in the middle of the night. "It's
Amor Towles
#72. I assure you, my dear, were you to play the piano on the moon, I would hear every chord.
Amor Towles
#73. Fate does not take sides. It is fair-minded and generally prefers to maintain some balance between the likelihood of success and failure in all our endeavors.
Amor Towles
#74. Who would have imagined," he said, "when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia.
Amor Towles
#75. The romantic interplay that we were having wasn't the real game
it was a modified version of the game. It was a version invented for two friends so that they can get some practice and pass the time divertingly while they eat in the station for their train to arrive
Amor Towles
#77. FRONTA NULLA FIDES. Place no trust in appearances.
Amor Towles
#78. Suddenly,I could picture Tinker on the back of a horse somewhere: at the edge of the treeline under a towering sky ... at his college roommate's ranch, perhaps ... where rhey hunted deer with antique rifles and with dogs that were better bred than me.
Amor Towles
#79. Ever since [that day], a small uncertainty had buzzed between us.It was a sense of chemistry that had been a little elusive, a little imprecise, until now.
Amor Towles
#80. (Lest you have forgotten, it is quite excruciating to hammer the back of your thumb. It inevitably prompts a hopping up and down and the taking of the Lord's name in vain.) But
Amor Towles
#81. It is of interest of times to change, Mr. Helecki. And it is the business of gentlemen to change with them.
Amor Towles
#82. Here they resided, two worldviews separated only by Fifth Avenue, facing off until the end of time or the end of Manhattan, whichever came first.
Amor Towles
#83. How little imagination and courage we show in our hatreds.
Amor Towles
#84. The Countess was of a mind that dinner should provide one with respite from life's trials and tribulations. Thus, she could not countenance discussions of religion, politics, or personal sorrows at her table.
Amor Towles
#85. I sutured split infinitives and hoisted dangling modifiers and wore out the seam of my best flannel skirt.
Amor Towles
#86. If only I were there and she were here," she sighed. And there, thought the Count, was a suitable plaint for all mankind.
Amor Towles
#87. Emily Post says that talking about oneself isn't very polite.' 'I'm sure Miss Post is perfectly correct, but that doesn't seem to stop the rest of us.
Amor Towles
#88. It was time enough for whole lives to have been led and misled... time enough, as the poet said, to murder and create -- or at least, to have warranted the dropping of a question on one's plate.
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#89. It is the business of the times to change, Mr. Halecki. And it is the business of gentlemen to change with them." The
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#90. ennui - that dreaded mire of the human emotions.
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#91. I found myself intent on keeping the memories of the year to myself.
[ ... ]
I didn't want to share them. Because I didn't want to dilute them
Amor Towles
#92. The lights flickered. The bands laid down their instruments and the crowds made quiety for the door.
Amor Towles
#93. For standing at the edge of his table was the young girl with the penchant for yellow - studying him with that unapologetic interest peculiar to children and dogs. Adding
Amor Towles
#94. But imagining what might happen if one's circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness. Sitting
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#95. But every period has its virtues, even a time of turmoil. . . . When
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#96. that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them. The
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#97. There are no more sympathetic souls than strangers. So,
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#98. The Count commenced to cough into his napkin, as he had determined long ago that this was the most effective means of removing wine from his windpipe.
Amor Towles
#99. I love Val. I love my job and my New York. I have no doubts that they were the right choices for me. And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss.
Amor Towles
#100. Dark, cold, and snowbound, Russia has the sort of climate in which the spirit of Christmas burns brightest.
Amor Towles
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