Vintage > Quotes

“Families of no importance—so much is lost, entire histories, there is no room for it all. There are only the generations surging forward like the tide, the years filled with sound and froth, then being washed over by the rest. That is the legacy of the cities.”
― Vintage, Burning the Days: Recollection (Ambassador Book Awards)

“The previous night had been frenzy and excess, the morning freshness and reason.”
― Vintage, Burning the Days: Recollection (Ambassador Book Awards)

“It was a long, beautiful fall. Many mornings I rose before dawn and went out on the bedroom balcony to read. Grasse rose blue in the distance.”
― Vintage, Burning the Days: Recollection (Ambassador Book Awards)

“All told, perhaps the most significant measure of the Great Migration was the act of leaving itself, regardless of the individual outcome. Despite the private disappointments and triumphs of any individual migrant, the Migration, in some ways, was its own point. The achievement was in making the decision to be free and acting on that decision, wherever that journey led them.”
― Vintage, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

“loved you very much. I might say that of Paris; my memories are heaped there. Somehow I was constantly returning—the train gliding through the endless suburbs or in blue air the airplane banking as, face close to the window, I looked down.”
― Vintage, Burning the Days: Recollection (Ambassador Book Awards)

“Much has faded but not the incomparable taste of France, given then so I would always remember it. I know that taste, the yellow headlights flowing along the road at night, the towns by a river, the misty mornings, the thoughts of everything that happened there, the notes that confirmed it and made it imperishable.”
― Vintage, Burning the Days: Recollection (Ambassador Book Awards)

“A car pulls up at the corner and a girl in an Air France uniform with a trim, tailored skirt gets out. The car has diplomatic plates, and a pale, spent driver leans across to bid goodbye and close the door behind her. She runs, hobbled by the skirt, towards the broad glass front: AIR FRANCE. The night has ended.”
― Vintage, Burning the Days: Recollection (Ambassador Book Awards)

“This Paris where you woke bruised after tremendous nights—indelible nights, your pockets empty, the last bills scattered on the floor, the memories scattered too.”
― Vintage, Burning the Days: Recollection (Ambassador Book Awards)

“Lunch near the Odéon. Paris day, a table by the window, handwritten menu, noon blue sky.”
― Vintage, Burning the Days: Recollection (Ambassador Book Awards)

“The lines have been spoken. The stage is empty and bare. Before that, however, is the performance. The curtain rises.”
― Vintage, Burning the Days: Recollection (Ambassador Book Awards)