Caleb Crain > Quotes

“In Rome the statues, in Paris the paintings, and in Prague the buildings suggest that pleasure can be an education.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“Jacob thought about going home. He still had some American change, which he kept in an empty matchbox in his sock drawer, and one night, after he had finished his pancakes and jam, he took the coins out, spread them on the kitchen table, and admired the burnt sienna patina of one of the pennies, which in the candlelight was iridescent with violet and green where people’s touch had salted it. The portrait of Lincoln was ugly and noble, and Jacob took off his glasses to look more closely. On the other side, an erratic line of shrubbery was engraved beside the Lincoln monument’s steps. The idealism seemed to be in Lincoln rather than in the coin’s design, which was homely. It was so homely, in fact, that there was a kind of democratic grandeur to it. It was the most beautiful currency in the world. Jacob was on the verge of tears.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“They sat talking naked so often and so long perhaps because they liked to be able to read the whole opalescent page of each other at once.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“Later, holding Milo’s hand in the dark, Jacob felt that it was only in recovering it that he learned what he had been in danger of losing. The touch of Milo’s hand seemed to remind him of parts of himself that he had already begun to forget about.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“Like capitalism,” Carl suggested. “‘We’ll give you so much pleasure, you’ll never want to try another socioeconomic system.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“Jacob opened the refrigerator and stared into it vacantly, with the false purposefulness that lingers for a few moments when a person of a solitary nature is released from the company of a strong personality.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“They came for the freedom, they stayed for the McNuggets.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“Unable to see, they were briefly seized by the characteristic Prague anxiety of never finding the entrance--of arriving at one's goal but remaining blocked from it by a wall or a stone on account of having overlooked an alley or medieval door a few dozen yards back, which has served as the approach so immemorially that no one any longer marked or described it.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“– I’m going to be a writer, he reminded Milo.
– And you won’t need literature?
– I’ll write my own.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“And suddenly it was all too much for him. He felt sad and misplaced, with the abrupt, overwhelming, dizzying sadness that comes over people in countries not their own, which has none of the richness of feeling that usually comes with sadness but is rather a kind of exhaustion.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“Overhead lights flickered on and off.
“It is closing soon,” Markus explained.
“Now is what I call tiger time. The great beasts pad about, eyeing one another, trying to make up their minds at last.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“Crisis – the midwife of capitalism. The ‘advisers’ arrive and say, My god, they have no predatory class here. It is an emergency! We must create one immediately. Let us arrange to give everything to a few crooks. Then this country, too, will have a mess of parasites to rule it, to suck the value of the people’s labour.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“They’re very keen on disillusioning young women at British universities, you know, I suppose to make us resigned and grateful later on.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“A suicide makes a fault in a novel, as suicides make a fault in life.”
― Caleb Crain

“There’s always a story that people are telling about themselves, and sometimes you can get them to tell it ever so slightly differently.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“No radio, no telephone,” Melinda observed. “No mod cons whatsoever in Hloubetin, are there.”
“We have a hamster,” Jacob said.
“Not traditionally considered an amenity.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“To find the spirit of change—was that it?—after the change had happened.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“It’s very strange to be completely naked in public,” said Jacob. “It isn’t something Americans ordinarily do.”
“I can’t say it’s very English, either,” replied Henry.
“It’s a Scottish thing, though, isn’t it? With all the kilts and all that.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“It’s a question of wanting to know how the story turns out. And one can only know that about one story, ever.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“They’re ruining the city, aren’t they,” remarked Rafe. “The backpackers.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“—Is it pleasing to you? Milo asked.
—It’s excellent. We have to come back.
—But we are here now.”
― Caleb Crain

“Since he had given up men he had taken up geography. He visited a new sight or a new neighborhood nearly every weekend.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“A year ago he had been in America. Two years ago he had been straight. Tonight he was underground, with the remains of the bogey man, lit by the torches of the children who had killed him.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“The only thing worse than living under a Communist totalitarian regime is outliving one.”
― Caleb Crain

“The worse one sins, the more of a moralist one becomes.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“The beer was cheap, the fiddling sharp, and the dancing sweaty.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“By its nature a relationship was not an accomplishment. It was just a connection that happened to exist, for as long as it did exist.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“Everyone likes to say they’re tolerant.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors

“Te only thing worse than living under a totalitarian Communist regime is outliving one.”
― Caleb Crain

“Because the air was bright and fresh, the ground beneath them empty, and both of them young, it was possible to imagine that either of them could become anything he wanted.”
― Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors