Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane--in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath--she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.
Tags: truth, small-pleasures, simplicity, simple-pleasures, purpose, pleasures, mundanity

Other Quotes by "Amor Towles"

As awful as the crimes of Stalinism were, the vast majority of the Russian population was trying to survive, to love, to have a sense of purpose.
Tags: survive, trying, purpose, love
Look at Snowden or Julian Assange. In their own way, they are free without restrictions. They are dropped in a place because of political reasons.
Tags: free, way, political, look
As both a student of history and a man devoted to living in the present, I admit that I do not spend a lot of time imagining how things might otherwise have been. But I do like to think there is a difference between being resigned to a situation and reconciled to it.
Tags: think, time, man, history
My grandmother, who was simultaneously a woman of manners and verve, fended off marriage proposals until she was 30 because she was having too much fun to settle down.
Tags: down, fun, woman, marriage
In my college years, I would retreat to our summer house for two weeks in June to read a novel a day. How exciting it was, after pouring my coffee and making myself comfortable on the porch, to open the next book on the roster, read the first sentences, and find myself on the platform of a train station.
Tags: next, day, coffee, myself
View More by "Amor Towles"