299 Quotes by Amor Towles

—Five languages? I said before he left.—Yeah. Five languages. And he can lie to himself in every one of them.

a mirror will suddenly serve its truer purpose - revealing to a man not who he imagines himself to be, but who he has become

There are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense.

For it is a fact that a man can be profoundly out of step with his times. A man may have been born in a city famous for its idiosyncratic culture and yet, the very habits, fashions, and ideas that exalt that city in the eyes of the world may make no sense to him at all. As he proceeds through life, he looks about in a state of confusion, understanding neither the inclinations nor the aspirations of his peers.

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.

Really. Is there anything nice to be said about other people's vacations? I balled up the letter and threw it in the trash.

Ignatov: "...History has shown charm to be the final ambition of the leisure class. What I do find surprising is that the author of the poem in question could have become a man so obviously without purpose. "Rostov: "I have lived under the impression that a man's purpose is known only to God."Ignatov: "Indeed. How convenient that must have been for you.

But after the war, when editors like Martin Durk came to prominence by trumpeting the timely death of the novel, Parish opted for a reflective silence. He stopped taking on projects and watched with quiet reserve as his authors died off one by one--at peace with the notion that he would join them soon enough in that circle of Elysium reserved for plot and substance and the judicious use of the semicolon.

For however decisive the Bolsheviks’ victory had been over the privileged classes on behalf of the Proletariat, they would be having banquets soon enough.