David > David's Quotes

“Wouldn’t it have been wonderful, thought Woolly, if everybody’s life was like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Then no one person’s life would ever be an inconvenience to anyone else’s. It would just fit snugly in its very own, specially designed spot, and in so doing, would enable the whole intricate picture to become complete.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“The funny thing about a picture, thought Woolly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what will happen next. And yet, once the picture has been framed and hung on a wall, what you see when you look at it closely are all the things that were about to happen. All the un-things. The things that were unanticipated. And unintended. And unreversible.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“in your time you shall do wrong unto others and others shall do wrong unto you. And these opposing wrongs will become your chains. The wrongs you have done unto others will be bound to you in the form of guilt, and the wrongs that others have done unto you in the form of indignation. The teachings of Jesus Christ Our Savior are there to free you from both. To free you from your guilt through atonement and from your indignation through forgiveness. Only once you have freed yourself from both of these chains may you begin to live your life with love in your heart and serenity in your step.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“And I do it because it’s unnecessary. For what is kindness but the performance of an act that is both beneficial to another and unrequired?”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“those who are given something of value without having to earn it are bound to squander it.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“I do believe that the Good Lord has a mission for each and every one of us—a mission that is forgiving of our weaknesses, tailored to our strengths, and designed with only us in mind. But maybe He doesn’t come knocking on our door and present it to us all frosted like a cake. Maybe, just maybe what He requires of us, what He expects of us, what He hopes for us is that—like His only begotten Son—we will go out into the world and find it for ourselves.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“Time is that which God uses to separate the idle from the industrious. For time is a mountain and upon seeing its steep incline, the idle will lie down among the lilies of the field and hope that someone passes by with a pitcher of lemonade. What the worthy endeavor requires is planning, effort, attentiveness, and the willingness to clean up.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“And from all of these pages upon pages, one thing I have learned is that there is just enough variety in human experience for every single person in a city the size of New York to feel with assurance that their experience is unique. And this is a wonderful thing. Because to aspire, to fall in love, to stumble as we do and yet soldier on, at some level we must believe that what we are going through has never been experienced quite as we have experienced it.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“That’s the sort of thing young people do: fan the flames of each other’s expectations—until the necessities of life begin to make themselves known.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“Questions can be so tricky, he said, like forks in the road. You can be having such a nice conversation and someone will raise a question, and the next thing you know you’re headed off in a whole new direction. In all probability, this new road will lead you to places that are perfectly agreeable, but sometimes you just want to go in the direction you were already headed.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“To hold another man in disdain, his father would say, presumed that you knew so much about his lot, so much about his intentions, about his actions both public and private that you could rank his character against your own without fear of misjudgment.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“Because young children don’t know how things are supposed to be done, they will come to imagine that the habits of their household are the habits of the world.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“—Homer began his story in medias res, which means in the middle of the thing. He began in the ninth year of the war with the hero, Achilles, nursing his anger in his tent. And ever since then, this is the way that many of the greatest adventure stories have been told.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“So yes, the making of strawberry preserves is time-consuming, old-fashioned, and unnecessary. Then why, you might ask, do I bother to do it? • • • I do it because it’s time-consuming. Whoever said that something worthwhile shouldn’t take time? It took months for the Pilgrims to sail to Plymouth Rock. It took years for George Washington to win the Revolutionary War. And it took decades for the pioneers to conquer the West. Time is that which God uses to separate the idle from the industrious. For time is a mountain and upon seeing its steep incline, the idle will lie down among the lilies of the field and hope that someone passes by with a pitcher of lemonade. What the worthy endeavor requires is planning, effort, attentiveness, and the willingness to clean up.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“That’s what rattled people do. They point a finger. They point a finger at whoever’s standing closest—and given the nature of how we congregate, that’s more likely to be friend than foe.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“The Good Lord does not call you to your feet with hymns from the cherubim and Gabriel blowing his horn. He calls you to your feet by making you feel alone and forgotten. For only when you have seen that you are truly forsaken will you embrace the fact that what happens next rests in your hands, and your hands alone.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“If you want to understand a man’s motivations, all you have to do is ask him: What would you do with fifty thousand dollars? When you ask most people this question, they need a few minutes to think about it, to sort through the possibilities and consider their options. And that tells you everything you need to know about them. But when you pose the question to a man of substance, a man who merits your consideration, he will answer in a heartbeat—and with specifics. Because he’s already thought about what he would do with fifty grand. He’s thought about it while he’s been digging ditches, or pushing paper, or slinging hash. He’s thought about it while listening to his wife, or tucking in the kids, or staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night. In a way, he’s been thinking about it all his life.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“What wisdom the Lord does not see fit to endow us with at birth, He provides through the gift of experience.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“But for your information, telling someone they didn’t have to go to the trouble of doing something is not the same as showing gratitude for it. Not by a long shot.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“It is one of the most basic principles of infinity that it must, by definition, encompass not only one of everything, but everything's duplicate, as well as its triplicate. In fact, to imagine that there are additional versions of ourselves scattered across human history is substantially less outlandish than to imagine that there are none.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“Many has been the night that I have knelt at the side of my bed and prayed to your mother, asking for guidance on how best to respond to your willfulness. And in all these years, your mother—God rest her soul—has not answered me once. So I have had to rely on my memories of how she cared for you. Though you were only twelve when she died, you were plenty contrary already. And when I would express my concern about that, your mother would tell me to be patient. Ed, she would say, our youngest is strong in spirit, and that should stand her in good stead when she becomes a woman. What we need to do is give her a little time and space.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s a certain charm to a town like this. And there’s a certain kind of person who would rather live here than anywhere else—even in the twentieth century. Like a person who wants to make some sense of the world. Living in the big city, rushing around amid all that hammering and clamoring, the events of life can begin to seem random. But in a town this size, when a piano falls out of a window and lands on a fellow’s head, there’s a good chance you’ll know why he deserved it.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“Emmett shook his head, uncertain of whether his father’s actions should give him cause for disappointment or admiration. As usual with such puzzles of the heart, the answer was probably both.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“As the old gent shuffled his way to the bureau, I scanned the room, curious as to his weakness. At the Sunshine hotel, for every room there was a weakness, and for every weakness an artifact bearing witness. Like an empty bottle that has rolled under the bed, or a feathered deck of cards on the nightstand, or a bright pink kimono on a hook. Some evidence of that one desire so delectable, so insatiable that it overshadowed all others, eclipsing even the desires for a home, a family, or a sense of human dignity.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“When it comes to waiting, has-beens have had plenty of practice. Like when they were waiting for their big break, or for their number to come in. Once it became clear that those things weren't going to happen, they started waiting for other things. Like for the bars to open, or the welfare check to arrive. Before too long, they were waiting to see what it would be like to sleep in a park, or to take the last two puffs from a discarded cigarette. They were waiting to see what new indignity they could become accustomed to while they were waiting to be forgotten by those they once held dear. But most of all, they waited for the end.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“Before, before, before. The funny thing about a picture, thought Woolly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what will happen next. And yet, once the picture has been framed and hung on a wall, what you see when you look at it closely are all the things that were about to happen. All the un-things. The things that were unanticipated. And unintended. And unreversible.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“what luck did a glass of whiskey ever bring anyone.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“A good Christian shows compassion toward those who are in difficulty. And that is an important part of the parable's meaning. But an equally important point that Jesus is making is that we don't always get to 'choose' to whom we should show our charity.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“Xenos is a word from ancient Greek that means foreigner and stranger, guest and friend. Or more simply, the Other. As Professor Abernathe says: Xenos is the one on the periphery in the unassuming garb whom you hardly notice. Throughout history, he has appeared in many guises: as a watchman or attendant, a messenger or page, a shopkeeper, waiter, or vagabond. Though usually unnamed, for the most part unknown, and too often forgotten, Xenos always shows up at just the right time in just the right place in order to play his essential role in the course of events.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway