Hailie’s Reviews > The Lincoln Highway > Status Update

“As Emmett walked out the door and climbed into his bright yellow car, I thought to myself that there are surely a lot of big things in America. The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty are big. The Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon are big. The skies over the prairie are big. But there is nothing bigger than a man's opinion of himself.”

“The great heroic tries were like a diamond on its side […] but itwasn't simply the lives of the renowned that conform to this geometry […] The manner in which the convergence takes you by surprise, that is the cruelest part […] For at the moment when the turning begins, the two opposing rays of your life are so far from each other you could never discern the change in their trajectory.”

“There is just enough variety in human experience for every single person in a city the size od 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 yumble 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.”

“At the Sunshine Hotel, for every room there was […] 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.”