The Best Lines from New Books
When we came across these fantastic lines, we had to gasp for air. Here's just a taste of the astounding new books that you should read immediately.
"The museum gallery whispered with the sound of wings and flight and she thought of the starlings wheeling through the flat Oklahoma sky, a solid flag of them waving in the currents of a wind."
—Marisa Silver, from Mary Coin
"What a shame, I often think, that she foresaw only the end times, never hot dogs."
—Karen Russell, from Vampires in the Lemon Grove
"The Lord brings us into this world naked, but I don't suppose he means us to stay that way."
—Ayana Mathis, from the second selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0,The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
“I liked that sentence then and I like that sentence now but then I had no way of making any sense of it, I could only keep it in my mind's eye, where it rested and grew in the embryo that would become my imagination.”
—Jamaica Kincaid, from See Now Then
"Around here, we're as happy as God in France."
—Herman Koch, from The Dinner
"Some things went out of style, but caution was always smart."
—Jeanine Basinger, from I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies
"It's strange: When you're trying to impress a person, you can't see that person well."
—Benjamin Nugent, from Good Kids
"You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible."
—Jojo Moyes, from Me Before You
"It is rare to get through this life without feeling generally with a degree of secret agony, perhaps at the end of a relationship, or as we lie in bed frustrated next to our partner, unable to go to sleep that we are somehow a bit odd about sex."
—Alain de Botton, from How to Think More About Sex
"F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives. I have no idea what that means but I believe that in quoting him I appear far more intelligent than I am. I don't know about second acts, but I do think we get second chances, fifth chances, eighteenth chances. Every day we get a fresh chance to live the way we want."
—John Kenney, from The Truth in Advertising
Next: Life-Illuminating quotes from new memoirs
Published 03/01/2013
