Quotes from book

The Marriage Plot

“In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.”

“When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.”

“College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.”

“There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.”

“She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.”

“What if you had faith and performed good works, what if you died and went to heaven, and what if all the people you met there were people you didn't like?”

“People don't save other people. People save themselves.”

“Every letter was a love letter.”

“It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.”

“Dieting fooled you into thinking you could control your life.”

“She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.”

“It was possible to feel superior to other people and feel like a misfit at the same time.”

“Paris was a museum displaying exactly itself.”

“To start with, look at all the books.”

“But, like anyone in love, Madeleine believed that her own relationship was different from every other relationship, immune from typical problems.”

“If Mitchell was ever going to become a good Christian, he would have to stop disliking people so intensely.”

“She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself.”

“Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world that you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and see you are a person. No! They have to look at a little photograph of you. Then they believe you exist.”

“She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.”