Quotes from book
Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys
Michael Chabon

Wonder Boys is a 1995 novel by the American writer Michael Chabon. It was adapted into a film with the same title in 2000.

Michael Chabon photo

“"I feel great," I said, trying to decide how I did feel.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“The whiskey tasted like bear steaks and river mud and the flesh of an oak tree. I had another swallow because it tasted so good.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“Her style was plain and poetic as rain on a daisy--she was particularly gifted at the description of empty land and horses. She lived in the basement of my house for a hundred dollars a month, and I was desperately in love with her.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“Her ankles were wobbling in her tall black pumps, and I saw that it could not be an easy thing to be a drunken transvestite.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“I found myself going over a particular troublesome scene in the novel, for the one thousand and seventy-third time, in the manner of a lunatic ape in a cage at the zoo, running his fingers back and forth along the iron bars of his home.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“Over the years I'd surrendered many vices, among them whiskey, cigarettes, and the various non-Newtonian drugs, but marijuana and I remained steadfast companions. I had one fragrant ounce of Humboldt County, California, in a Ziploc bag in the glove compartment of my car.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“A couple of years later I would marry her for a little while.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“The young men listen dutifully, for the most part, and from time to time some of them even take the trouble to go over to the college library, and dig up one or another of his novels, and crouch there, among the stacks, flipping impatiently through the pages, looking for parts that sound true.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“I had a certain cetacean delicacy of movement in the wide open sea of a hundred-yard field…”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“The problem, if anything, was precisely the opposite. I had too much to write: too many fine and miserable buildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming, too many characters to raise up from the dirt like flowers whose petals I peeled down to the intricate frail organs within, too many terrible genetic and fiduciary secrets to dig up and bury and dig up again, too many divorces to grant, heirs to disinherit, trysts to arrange, letters to misdirect into evil hands, innocent children to slay with rheumatic fever, women to leave unfulfilled and hopeless, men to drive to adultery and theft, fires to ignite at the hearts of ancient houses.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Michael Chabon photo

“As a lifelong habit of marijuana I was used to having even the most dreadful phenomena prove, on further inspection, to be only the figments of my paranoid fancy…”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)