November Road Quotes
"We only get one ride in this life, one time around. If we don’t enjoy every minute of it, if we don’t embrace pleasure with open arms, who’s to blame for that?"
"The art of the payoff. Guidry understood each man’s price, the right kicker to close the deal."
"A hand sliding up under the hem of a dress, lips brushing against an ear. Guidry loved it. Everyone here looking for an angle to work, a tender spot."
"What was life but this? A series of rapid calculations: the shifting of weights, the balancing of scales. The only poor decision was a decision you allowed someone else to make for you."
"The floor-to-ceiling view, the black leather sofa, the glass-and-chromium bar cart, the expensive hi-fi. She positioned herself by the window, a hand on her hip, weight on one leg to show off her curves, glancing over her shoulder the way she’d seen the models in magazines do it."
"Charlotte searched for her purse. She’d had it in her hand a moment ago. Hadn’t she? She heard Dooley retch again, rinse again. The dog had flopped over and then settled."
"Was it selfish of her, she wondered, to want more from her life? To want more for Rosemary and Joan? Woodrow was idyllic in many ways. Quaint, safe, friendly. But it was also interminably dull."
"The president had been shot. Charlotte wasn’t sure if she’d truly grasped that yet. At the bank she’d watched as Hope Norton dropped her armful of folders. As Bonnie Bublitz in the teller cage burst into tears."
"On TV they cut to the Dallas police station. Cops in suits and white cowboy hats, reporters, gawkers, everybody pushing and shoving. There was the mope, in the middle of it all, getting bounced around."
"Get rid of the Eldorado. And then get rid of the man who got rid of the Eldorado. Get rid of the man who knows about Dallas."
"A man gets in a certain habit, he stays there."
"It’s like watching a replay of something that had already happened."
"You’re born a certain way. You stay that way."
"He’d rather take the punch and the slap than not know which one was coming."
"Every single person Charlotte knew would be appalled. Every single person in Woodrow, in other words."
"If she turned around now, here, she’d be home well before Dooley stumbled in for the night. She’d be tucked back into her bed, into her life, as if none of this had ever happened."
"The moral of The Wizard of Oz, of course, the lesson that Dorothy finally learned, was that there’s no place like home."
"If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas."
"It means... well, I suppose it means that you should choose your friends wisely."
"Every human heart was rotten meat, but Dolly’s was more rotten than most."
"I wouldn’t walk across the street for a Ted Williams card."
"You’re just a golden ray of sunshine, aren’t you?"
"How hard could it be to disappear off the face of it?"
"There’s always a bumpier road than the one you’re riding on."
"You know you’ll come home. You know you will."
"Nobody will ever love you like I do. Why do you want to throw that away?"
"Seems like the more careful you are, the more mistakes you make."
"It’s not right, Charlie, making a decision like that all by yourself and I don’t even have a say in it."
"White man gets shot, it’s National Day of Mourning. Colored man gets shot, it’s Monday morning."
"Don’t you want me to find him and send your regards?"
"You almost gave me a heart attack I was so worked up."
"You’re clever and you’re smooth, and you’d sell your own mother to the Gypsies."
"It's Tuesday, November twenty-sixth, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-three."
"But fuck Seraphine. In her comfortable office, her comfortable life, having cocktails before dinner every evening, strolling through the park. Barone was the one who had to do all the heavy lifting. Who risked his life for Carlos. Seraphine had to worry about chipping her nail polish on the adding machine."
"The worst part of an unhappy childhood: the occasional happy moments, when you’re allowed a glimpse of the life that you might have instead."
"Life wasn’t complicated. Women weren’t complicated. So why couldn’t Guidry keep it straight, if he wanted Charlotte or not?"
"Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost."
"The Bible says that the meek shall inherit the earth. But I’ve always been skeptical of that opinion."
"You have to raise your voice. You have to take what’s yours by right. You can’t count on anyone just giving it to you."
"Standing here on the brink, you felt smaller than small, a speck. You were forced to face the uncomfortable truth of your own existence: You did not, in the scheme of things, matter at all."
"If it’s between you or me, friend, I choose me. Every single time."
"Experience an emotion without allowing it to determine your actions. Hear a knock on the door without feeling compelled to open it."
"You take pictures of shadows," Guidry said. "You take pictures of people watching the thing, but not of the thing they’re watching."
"When I have a camera in my hand, it reminds me to look in new places. To have new thoughts, I suppose."
"I know it’s supposed to be beautiful. Maybe I’d take a picture of the people watching the explosion instead."
"Please don’t stop," Guidry said. "I beg of you."
"Decide what you want and let nothing stand in your way. Come, see, conquer."
"With every decision we create a new future. We destroy all other futures."
"The tough part is not making the decision. It's living with it."
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
"Love doesn't last, but that doesn't mean it wasn't ever there."
"You have to put your heart into deception, you had to give it everything you had."
"We love each other. Nothing else matters."
"I’m just across the hall. I’ll be back by ten. If you need anything, anything at all, come and get me."
"He wasn’t nervous. Why was he sweating? He wasn’t drunk either."
"You understand what happens if you give me any trouble?"
"Let me go. Please. I’m leaving. I’ve already packed my bags."
"If anyone asks me, I’ll swear that I never saw you."
"You’re very ill. Don’t you think you should sit down again?"
"The girls, the girls, the girls. And yet, at the same time, something more powerful than panic held her still, calmed her mind, emptied it of every fear, every dread, every distraction."
"He was unsteady on his feet. Sweating, shivering."
"She wouldn’t live long enough to find out which. She would die without knowing if they were safe or not."
"She touched a smooth wooden handle. She touched a steel shaft attached to the handle, slender as a needle."
"He set the gun on the dresser. And then he was across the room, two startlingly swift strides."
"The steady crushing strength of his fingers astonished her."
"She rolled off the bed and stumbled to her feet. Her throat was on fire."
"He knocked lightly. How the hell was he going to sell her this late-night, last-minute dash?"
"Guidry walked across the parking lot. Made it all the way to his car with the smile on his face, the tide of pain rising, rising."
"The ghost moved slowly around to the passenger side. A breath, a step. A breath, a step."
"Guidry considered again how close to the fire he’d dragged Charlotte and the girls. It was unforgivable."
"That wasn’t what kept him awake till the wee hours, though, the whunk and the crash. What kept him awake was the stretch of silence in between, the anticipation, the wait for the other shoe to drop."
"But all the employees there assumed that Charlotte’s last name was Wainwright."
"Guidry wasn’t afraid of dying. Well, he was terrified of dying. But more terrified of dying badly."
"It really was a nice view of the river. The water rippling, the merry lights of the barges and the towboats."
"If you were lucky, if you knew what was coming, you got to choose your memory."
"She’s a vice president of production at a major studio (how many women in Hollywood can say that?)."
"She has two healthy, smart, kind, occasionally wonderful, always challenging, never dull children."
"She’s forty-six but looks mid-late thirties, thanks to genetically blessed skin and a lifelong aversion to beaches and cigarettes."
"It doesn’t feel like she’s been gone four years. But it also feels like forever."