The Music Of Chance Quotes
"For one whole year he did nothing but drive, traveling back and forth across America as he waited for the money to run out."
"It all came down to a question of sequence, the order of events."
"It wasn’t possible to feel grief, but Nashe assumed that he would be touched in some other way—by something akin to sadness, perhaps, by a surge of last-minute angers and regrets."
"He drove for seven straight hours, paused momentarily to fill up the tank with gas, and then continued for another six hours until exhaustion finally got the better of him."
"Speed was of the essence, the joy of sitting in the car and hurtling himself forward through space."
"He welcomed these close calls, however. They added an element of risk to what he was doing, and more than anything else, that was what he was looking for: to feel that he had taken his life into his own hands."
"Nashe knew that no road was entirely free of danger."
"Now that he was being forced to think about it again, he decided to make a bargain with himself. He would keep on going until there were twenty thousand dollars left, and then he would go back to Berkeley and ask Fiona to marry him."
"Nashe understood that he was no longer behaving like himself. He could hear the words coming out of his mouth, but even as he spoke them, he felt they were expressing someone else’s thoughts."
"Once a man begins to recognize himself in another, he can no longer look on that person as a stranger."
"There was something terrible about such candor, finally, and he wondered where Rousseau had found the courage to reveal such a thing about himself, to admit to such naked self-deception."
"The point was to see how long he could live in a state of uncertainty: to act as though he had forgotten about it and in that way use the power of silence to force Pozzi into making the first move."
"First they wine and dine us, and then we walk off with their money. You’ve got to feel sorry for bozos like that. Just a little bit anyway."
"The strange thing was not that he was able to imagine this possibility but that he could do so with such indifference and detachment, with so little inner pain."
"The fascination was simply for the objects as material things, and the way they had been wrenched out of any possible context, condemned by Flower to go on existing for no reason at all."
"But those funny bits only made the other elements seem more ominous, and after a while Nashe found himself concentrating almost exclusively on the prison."
"It was the isolation that haunted Nashe, the image of irreducible separateness that burned down into his memory, and no matter how hard he struggled, he never managed to break free of it."
"He knew that in the same way he knew his own name."
"As soon as he left, the goddamn roof started to collapse."
"It’s a question of manners, that’s all. If they have something to tell us, then we owe them the courtesy of hearing them out."
"It’s a waste of time," Pozzi muttered, sinking back into his chair. "You don’t negotiate with madmen. Once you start to do that, your brain gets all fucked up."
"I’m glad you brought your brother along with you," Flower said, letting out a sigh of disgust. "At least there’s one reasonable man we can talk to."
"Shit," Pozzi said. "He’s not my brother. He’s just some guy I met on Saturday. I barely even know him."
"You can live right out there in the meadow," Flower said.
"It has a kitchen," Stone added. "A fully equipped kitchen. A refrigerator, a stove, a sink, all the modern conveniences."
"And every day you’ll see another section of the wall go up. That will be immensely satisfying, I think: to see the tangible fruits of your labor, to be able to step back and see the progress you’ve made."
"Stubborn, aren’t you? And what if I went up to ten? What would you say to that?"
"It’s less than two months, Jack, no big deal. They’ll feed us, give us a place to live, and before you know it, we’ll be gone. Why worry about it? We might even have some fun."
"You sound scared, Jimbo. Not a good sign. It makes you look ugly."
"It’s a mistake to trust those fuckers, I’m telling you."
"Yeah, well, from what I heard, things didn’t go too good for you either."
"You mean a hoor? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? You want us to get you a hoor?"
"You’re a crazy son of a bitch, little guy. No telling what you might do."
"It’s just good to keep things straight, that’s all. In fact, I’m kind of glad you put on your dress-up belt today. It gives my friend Jim here a better picture of things."
"This isn’t brain surgery, Mr. Nashe. It’s unskilled labor. Piling one stone on top of another. It doesn’t require much study to do that."
"If we give you a truck, you’ll just use it to sneak out of here. That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? No sense in giving you an opportunity to escape."
"I’m just here to see you don’t screw up."
"It was just a matter of time before you asked me about it. Ain’t no other way it could have gone."
"That was the deal," he said. "Whatever you want, you can get."
"Just don’t let it happen again. Next time I won’t be so nice about it."
"At least you won’t have to suffer alone anymore. That’s something to be thankful for, isn’t it? I’m with you every step of the way, Jack. Every damned step, right to the end of the road."
"That’s the way it’s done. One stone at a time."
"It’s not like mowing the grass or chopping wood. That’s work, too, but it don’t ever amount to much. When you work on a wall like this, you’ve always got something to show for it."
"You don’t have to be cute, mister," Murks said. "I know what the First Amendment is."
"Well, you can always change your mind," the girl said. "That fat guy shelled out plenty for this, and I came here thinking I was going to fuck you both. It’s no skin off my back. For that kind of money, I’d fuck a dog if I had to."
"We’re just talking about two or three extra days," Nashe said.
"He sang as he had always dreamed of singing, and he knew that he was not deluding himself from the way Pozzi and the girl looked at him, from the stunned expressions on their faces when they realized that the sounds were coming from his mouth."
"He didn’t want to be in the kid’s way anymore, and now that the food was gone, he had run out of excuses for being there."
"It was a difficult melody, but except for a few false notes in the opening stanza, his voice did not betray him."
"Still, it wasn’t easy lying there in the dark, listening to their laughter and thumping out in the other room."
"Nashe awoke shortly past ten, head cracking in both temples, and started off toward the shower."
"He drank three cups, sitting at the table and smoking cigarettes from a pack the girl had left behind."
"It was an unusually warm and sunny day for mid-October, and as Nashe sat there with the book in his lap, lighting up one of the cigars they had ordered for the party, he suddenly felt so tranquil, so profoundly at peace with himself."
I know that," Nashe said. "You wouldn’t have come out here today unless you did.
"Nashe’s head buzzed with these strangely omniscient words as he walked back to the trailer with Murks and the boy."
"Listening to The Marriage of Figaro in the trailer at night. Sometimes, when a particularly beautiful aria came on, he would imagine that Juliette was singing to him, that it was her voice he was hearing."