Page 35
I guess some people are like that when it comes to surprises. Me, I love surprises. I love it when life pulls
a rabbit out of a hat. Like when the blue-plate special is turkey and stuffing in the middle of May. But
some people just don’t like being caught off guard—even by good news.
Page 38
Country cooking . . . You hear a lot about it back East. It’s one of those things that people revere even
when they’ve never had any firsthand experience with it. Like justice and Jesus.
Page 103
I do it because it’s old-fashioned. Just because something’s new doesn’t mean it’s better; and often
enough, it means it’s worse. Saying please and thank you is plenty old-fashioned. Getting married and
raising children is old-fashioned. Traditions, the very means by which we come to know who we are, are
nothing if not old-fashioned.
Page 175
it had been in gratitude that by gently coaxing her from her malaise in order to witness this magical
display, he had reminded her of what joy could be, if only she were willing to leave her daily life behind.
Page 201
Emmett was raised to hold no man in disdain. To hold another man in disdain, his father would say,
presumed that you knew so much about his lot, so much about his intentions, about his actions both
public and private that you could rank his character against your own without fear of misjudgment. But
as he watched the one called Parker empty another glass of tepid gin and then draw the olive off the
minute hand with his teeth, Emmett couldn’t help but measure the man and find him wanting.
Page 222
The boy continued to shake his head, though not in a contrary way. He shook his head in the manner of
patience and kinship.
Page 288
On the bed were four cardboard boxes with his name written on them. Woolly paused for a moment to
marvel at the handwriting. For even though his name had been written in letters two inches tall with a
big black marker, you could still tell it was his sister’s handwriting—the very same handwriting that
had been used to write the tiny little numbers on the tiny little rectangle in the telephone dial. Isn’t that
interesting, thought Woolly, that a person’s handwriting is the same no matter how big or small.
Page 406
Well, when circumstances conspire to spoil your carefully laid plans with an unexpected reversal, the
best thing you can do is take credit as quickly as possible.
Page 422
And from all of these pages upon pages, one thing I have learned is that there is just enough variety in
human experience for every single person in a city the size of 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 stumble 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.
Page 455
—No, no, said Woolly. It’s for you. I took it out of the box because I want you to have it. Shaking his
head, Billy said that such a watch was far too precious to be given away. —But that’s not so, countered
Woolly excitedly. It’s not a watch that’s too precious to be given away. It’s a watch that’s too precious for
keeping. It was handed down from my grandfather to my uncle, who handed it down to me. Now I am
handing it down to you. And one day—many years from now—you can hand it down to someone else.
Perhaps Woolly hadn’t put his point to perfection, but Billy seemed to understand.
Page 463
But maybe, I was thinking as I was driving over the Hudson River, just maybe the will to stay put stems
not from a man’s virtues but from his vices. After all, aren’t gluttony, sloth, and greed all about staying
put? Don’t they amount to sitting deep in a chair where you can eat more, idle more, and want more? In
a way, pride and envy are about staying put too. For just as pride is founded on what you’ve built up
around you, envy is founded on what your neighbor has built across the street. A man’s home may be
his castle, but the moat, it seems to me, is just as good at keeping people in as it is at keeping people out.
Page 477
Emmett could tell that Sally was as ashamed as he was, and there was comfort in that too. Not the
comfort of knowing that someone else was feeling a similar sting of rebuke. Rather, the comfort of
knowing one’s sense of right and wrong was shared by another, and thus was somehow more true.
Page 505
What an extraordinary passage were those first years in Manhattan! When Abacus experienced
firsthand the omnivalent, omnipresent, omnifarious widening that is life. Or rather, that is the first half
of life. When did the change come? When did the outer limits of his world turn their corner and begin
moving inexorably toward their terminal convergence?
Page 506
How easily we forget—we in the business of storytelling—that life was the point all along.
Page 536
Emmett shook his head, uncertain of whether his father’s actions should give him cause for
disappointment or admiration. As usual with such puzzles of the heart, the answer was probably both.
Page 547
He was clearly rattled by it. In all probability, he had never seen a dead body before, certainly not the
body of a friend. So I really couldn’t fault him for throwing some blame my way. That’s what rattled
people do. They point a finger. They point a finger at whoever’s standing closest—and given the nature
of how we congregate, that’s more likely to be friend than foe.
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