“For all that she’d had no great expectations for it, sex was turning out to be even more squalid, tawdry, and cynical than she had suspected it would.”

—  Michael Swanwick, book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 10 (p. 172)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For all that she’d had no great expectations for it, sex was turning out to be even more squalid, tawdry, and cynical t…" by Michael Swanwick?
Michael Swanwick photo
Michael Swanwick96
American science fiction author 1950

Related quotes

Khaled Hosseini photo

“She was my mother and she would not leave me. This I had simply accepted and expected. I had no more thanked her for it than i did the sun for shining on me.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Jane nodded, and she mentally thanked the several-greats-grandmother who had decided she’d rather risk royal displeasure than give up a book.”

Tina Connolly American writer

Source: Ironskin (2012), Chapter 9, “The Misses Ingel” (p. 149)

“There is no escape if love is not there," Hannah had said. Had Hannah known when she herself had not even suspected? It was not escape that she had dreamed about, it was love.”

Elizabeth George Speare book The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Source: The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Jonathan Safran Foer photo

“She had fallen in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love at all, but doing something much more ordinary.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Variant: She had been in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love, but rather doing something much more ordinary
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“She curled her lip. She had discovered cynicism.”

Keith Roberts book Pavane

Fifth measure “The White Boat” (p. 194)
Pavane (1968)

Jack McDevitt photo

“It had been his experience that the worst cynics all started out as idealists.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 18 (p. 166)

Arthur Conan Doyle photo

“Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Tad Williams photo

“She realized now that she knew little about people outside the courts of Nabban and Erkynland, although she had always thought herself a shrewd judge of humanity. However, it was a larger and much more complicated world on the other side of the castle walls than she had ever suspected.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 13, “The Nest Builders” (p. 406).

“She would have come from Paradise and complained to God that the apple wasn’t a winesap at all, but a great big pulpy Washington Delicious; and after the Ark she would have said that there had not been the animals, the spring rains, and the nice long ocean-voyage the prospectus from the travel agency had led her to expect—and that she had been most disappointed at not finding on Mount Ararat Prometheus.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1, p. 9

Yasunari Kawabata photo

“Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate.”

Yasunari Kawabata book Thousand Cranes

Source: Thousand Cranes

Related topics