Amor Towles Quotes & Sayings

A king fortifies himself with a castle," observed the Count, "a gentleman with a desk." As — Amor Towles

Little closer, as if I hadn't quite heard him. I leaned at an angle five degrees less acute than the waitress had. - What's that? - I was wondering if there's a melody in there. - It just went out for a smoke. It'll be back in a minute. But I take it that you don't — Amor Towles

It is of interest of times to change, Mr. Helecki. And it is the business of gentlemen to change with them. — Amor Towles

the Count bounced twice on his new mattress to identify the key of the bedsprings (G-sharp), — Amor Towles

History is the business of identifying momentous events from the comfort of a high-back chair. With the benefit of time, the historian looks back and points to a date in the manner of a gray-haired field marshal pointing to a bend in a river on a map: There it was, he says. The turning point. The decisive factor. The fateful day that fundamentally altered all that was to follow. There — Amor Towles

Well, sometimes everybody tells you something because it is true."
"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? — Amor Towles

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. — Amor Towles

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

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

What's more, Fatima was fluent in the floral codes that had governed polite society since the Age of Chivalry. Not only did she know the flower that should be sent as an apology, she knew which flower to send when one has been late; when one has spoken out of turn; and when, having taking notice of the young lady at the door, one has carelessly overtrumped one's partner. In short, Fatima knew a flower's fragrance, color, and purpose better than a bee. — Amor Towles

Invariably dressed in black, the Countess was one of those dowagers whose natural natural independence of mind, authority of age, and impatience with the petty made her the ally of all irreverent youth. — Amor Towles

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. — Amor Towles

You have always been fond of little Nina." "Of course I have." "And in part, that is because she is such an independent spirit." "Precisely." "Then you must trust in her. And even if she is single-minded to a fault, you must trust that life will find her in time. For eventually, it finds us all." The Count nodded for a moment, reflecting on Marina's — Amor Towles

Stalin himself declared: Life has improved, comrades. Life is more joyous. . . . — Amor Towles

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

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

Most New Yorkers spent their lives somewhere between the fruit cart and the fifth floor. To see the city from a few hundred feet above the riffraff was pretty celestial. We gave the moment its due. — Amor Towles

But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And — Amor Towles

Wallace was just the sort who blends into the background of the school photo (or the greeting line at the cotillion) but who, with the passage of time, increasingly stands out against the lapses in character around him. — Amor Towles

If Broadway was a river running from the top of Manhattan down to the Battery, undulating with traffic and commerce and lights, then the east-west streets were eddies where, leaf-like, one could turn slow circles from the beginning to the ever shall be, world without end. — Amor Towles

But correspondents are a wily bunch. Having stashed their typewriters, crossed the border, changed their clothes, and counted to ten, they began slipping back into the country one by one. So in 1928, the Foreign Press Office was opened anew on the top floor of a six-story walk-up conveniently located halfway between the Kremlin and the offices of the secret police - a spot that just happened to be across the street from the Metropol. Thus, — Amor Towles

History has shown charm to be the final ambition of the leisure class. — Amor Towles

It is a sad but unavoidable fact of life," he began, "that as we age our social circles grow smaller. Whether from increased habit or diminished vigor, we suddenly find ourselves in the company of just a few familiar faces. — Amor Towles

Suddenly - I shone in all my might, and morning rang its round. Always to shine, to shine everywhere, to the very depths of the last days, to shine - and to hell with everything else! That is my motto - and the sun's! — Amor Towles

that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them. The — Amor Towles

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

was ten and eleven — Amor Towles

For centuries champagne has been used to launch marriages and ships. Most assume this is because the drink is so intrinsically celebratory; but, in fact, it is used at the onset of these dangerous enterprises because it so capably boosts one's resolve. When the glass was placed on the table, the Count took a swig large enough to tickle his sinuses. — Amor Towles

As best as the Count could determine, the Bolsheviks assembled whenever possible in whichever form for whatever reason. In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquiums, 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. If — Amor Towles

I told him I'd always found the description a little too long on adjectives and a little too short on specifics. — Amor Towles

Vyshinsky: And your occupation? — Amor Towles

I assure you, my dear, were you to play the piano on the moon, I would hear every chord. — Amor Towles

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

If patience wasn't so easily tested, then it would hardly be a virtue. . . . "Yes, — Amor Towles

An act of generosity rarely ends a man's responsibilities toward another; it tends instead to begin them. — Amor Towles

Really. Is there anything nice to be said about other people's vacations? — Amor Towles

When one turns seventeen and begins to experience that first period of real independence, one's senses are so alert, one's sentiments so finely attuned that every conversation, every look, every laugh may be writ indelibly upon one's memory. And the friends that one happens to make in those impressionable years? One will meet them forever after with a welling of affection. — Amor Towles

Presumably, the bells of the Church of the Ascension had been reclaimed by the Bolsheviks for the manufacture of artillery, thus returning them to the realm from whence they came. Though for all the Count knew, the cannons that had been salvaged from Napoleon's retreat to make the Ascension's bells had been forged by the French from the bells at La Rochelle; which in turn had been forged from British blunderbusses seized in the Thirty Years War. From bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time. — Amor Towles

FRONTA NULLA FIDES. Place no trust in appearances. — Amor Towles

That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love. The — Amor Towles

Whatever their story, Eve was breathing easy now - for the moment forgetful, vulnerable, at peace. It's a purposeful irony of life, I suppose, that we never get to see ourselves in that state. We can only pay witness to our waking reflection, which to one degree or another is always fretting or afraid. Maybe that's why young parents find it so beguiling to spy on their children when they're fast asleep. — Amor Towles

For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense. — Amor Towles

Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You've carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are - cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades. — Amor Towles

Be careful when choosing what you're proud of
because the world has every intention of using it against you. — Amor Towles

if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them. — Amor Towles

One must be prepared to fight for one's simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements. — Amor Towles

Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you - that sort of inner tranquility that they write about in books, but that almost no one seems to possess. I was wondering to myself: How does she do that? And I figured it could only come from having no regrets - from having made choices with ... such poise and purpose. — Amor Towles

But events can unfold in such a manner that overnight the man out of step finds himself in the right place at the right time. The fashions and attitudes that had seemed so alien to him are suddenly swept aside and supplanted by fashions and attitudes in perfect sympathy with his deepest sentiments. Then, like a lone sailor adrift for years on alien seas, he wakes one night to discover familiar constellations overhead. And — Amor Towles

the Confederacy of the Humbled is a close-knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile. As — Amor Towles

- Bucky dear, his wife warned, you're slurring your words. - Slurring is the cursive of speech, I observed. — Amor Towles

He had that certain confidence in his bearing, that democratic interest in his surroundings, and that understated presumption of friendliness that are only found in young men who have been raised in the company of money and manners. It didn't occur to people liek this that they might be unwelcome in a new environment - and as a result they rarely were. — Amor Towles

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

Hollywood is the single most dangerous force in the history of class struggle." Or — Amor Towles

will-o'-the-wisp — Amor Towles

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

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

end of a page. "Surely, by now, — Amor Towles

In moments of high emotion, whether they're triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment, if the next thing you are going to say makes you feel better, than it's probably the wrong thing to say. — Amor Towles

But the objection being raised was not due to the phrase's overall lack of verve; rather it was due to the word facilitate. Specifically, the verb had been accused of being so tepid and prim that it failed to do justice to the labors of the men in the room. — Amor Towles

That's the problem with being born in New York, the old newsman observed a little sadly. You've got no New York to run away to. — Amor Towles

The lights flickered. The bands laid down their instruments and the crowds made quiety for the door. — Amor Towles

I suppose Anne was right when she observed that at any given moment we're all seeking someone's forgiveness. — Amor Towles

What was your favorite day of the year? The summer solstice. June twenty-first. The longest day of the year. — Amor Towles

In the 1950s, America had picked up the globe by the heels and shaken the change from its pockets. Europe had become a poor cousin - all crests and no table settings. And the indistinguishable countries of Africa, Asia, and South America had just begun skittering across our schoolroom walls like salamanders in the sun. True, — Amor Towles

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

That's the problem with living in New York. You've got no New York to run away to. — Amor Towles

the best-bred dogs belong in the surest hands. — Amor Towles

That's how quickly New York City comes about - like a weather wane - or the head of a cobra. Time tells which. — Amor Towles

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

Anyone can buy a car or a night on the town. Most of us shell our days like peanuts. One in a thousand can look at the world with amazement. I don't mean gawking at the Chrysler Building. I'm talking about the wing of a dragonfly. The tale of the shoeshine. Walking through an unsullied hour with an unsullied heart — Amor Towles

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

guess the point I'm trying to make is that as a species we're just no good at writing obituaries. We don't know how a man or his achievements will be perceived three generations from now, any more than we know what his great-great-grandchildren will be having for breakfast on a Tuesday in March. Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back." They — Amor Towles

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

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

By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration - and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them — Amor Towles

(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

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

For all the varied concerns attendant to the raising of a child - over schoolwork, dress, and manners - in the end, a parent's responsibility could not be more simple: To bring a child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment. — Amor Towles

The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our — Amor Towles

the wise man celebrates what he can. — Amor Towles

It is the business of the times to change, Mr. Halecki. And it is the business of gentlemen to change with them." The — Amor Towles

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

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

Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane
int he cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap i the bath
she has probably put herself in unnecessary danger. — Amor Towles

He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of lucidity - a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of the life we had been meant to lead all along. — Amor Towles

You could just tell that if Rosie couldn't romance her way to the top of the Empire State Building, she was prepared to climb it like King Kong. — Amor Towles

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

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

Alexander Rostov was neither scientist nor sage; but at the age of sixty-four he was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate and our opinions evolve--if not glacially, then at least gradually. Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew. — Amor Towles

I'm willing to be under anything, she said, as long as it isn't somebody's thumb. — Amor Towles

So before responding, he signaled the Bishop for another glass of champagne. For centuries champagne has been used to launch marriages and ships. Most assume this is because the drink is so intrinsically celebratory; but, in fact, it is used at the onset of these dangerous enterprises because it so capably boosts one's resolve. When — Amor Towles

From bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time. Such is the fate of iron ore. — Amor Towles

Now they were satisfied to express their individuality through which Rogers they preferred at the Saturday matinee: Ginger or Roy or Buck. America may be the land of opportunity, but in New York it's the shot at conformity that pulls them through the door — Amor Towles

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that as a species we're just no good at writing obituaries. We don't know how a man or his achievements will be perceived three generations from now, any more than we know what his great-great-grandchildren will be having for breakfast on a Tuesday in March. Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back. — Amor Towles

There is an of-quoted passage in Walden, in which Thoreau exhorts us to find our pole star and to follow it unwaveringly as would a sailor or a fugitive slave. It's a thrilling sentiment - one so obviously worthy of our aspirations. But even if you had the discipline to maintain the true course, the real problem, it has always seemed to me, is how to know in which part of the heavens your star resides — Amor Towles

All little girls outgrow their interest in princesses," she said. "In fact, they outgrow their interest in princesses faster than little boys outgrow their interest in clambering about. — Amor Towles

And as she talked, the Count had to acknowledge once again the virtues of withholding judgment. — Amor Towles

I'll tell you what is convenient," he said after a moment. "To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment's notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka - and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most." Anna — Amor Towles

Like the American correspondents, jazz seemed a naturally gregarious force - one that was a little unruly and prone to say the first thing that popped into its head, but generally of good humor and friendly intent. In addition, it seemed decidedly unconcerned with where it had been or where it was going - exhibiting somehow simultaneously the confidence of the master and the inexperience of the apprentice. Was there any wonder that such an art had failed to originate in Europe? The — Amor Towles

Some, no doubt, would simply dismiss it as a by-product of barbarism. Given Russia's long, heartless winters, its familiarity with famine, its rough sense of justice, and so on, and so on, it was perfectly natural for its gentry to adopt an act of definitive violence as the means of resolving disputes. — Amor Towles