Quotes from book

Let the Great World Spin

“She's always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing its yours.”

“The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.”

“There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.”

“He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last.”

“Good days, they come around the oddest corners.”

“It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from.”

“Everything was fabulous, even our breakdowns.”

“The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.”

“… it was necessary to love silence, but before you could love silence you had to have noise.”

“If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.”

“I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they're the things that matter.”

“Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking someday in the dark and the truth will come shining through, and behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.”

“I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.”

“The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.”

“With all respects to heaven, I like it here.”

“Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.”

“I'm only telling you on the truth," he said. "If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.”

“There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface.

There is, I think, a fear of love.

There is a fear of love.”

“The stars looked like nail heads in the sky--pull a few of them out and the darkness would fall.”