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Norman Rush QUOTES

Norman Rush QUOTES

1 " It was a standard fantasy when you fell in love to imagine you could go back in time and find your beloved growing up, appear there, save him or her, get together as adolescents, by magic, and go on together, fighting for one another, into old age, never wavering. "

― Norman Rush , Subtle Bodies

2 " Small breasts are best for the long haul. "

― Norman Rush , Mortals

3 " For me love is like this: you're in one room or apartment which you think is fine, then you walk through a door and close it behind you and find yourself in the next apartment, which is even better, larger, more floorspace, a better view. You're happy there and then you go into the next apartment and close the door and this one is even better. And the sequence continues, but with the odd feature that although this has happened to you a number of times, you forget: each time your new quarters are manifestly better and each time it's breathtaking, a surprise, something you've done nothing to deserve or make happen. You never intend to go from one room onward to the next—it just happens. You notice a door, you go through, and you're delighted again. "

― Norman Rush , Mating

4 " There is no permanent friendship between men, among men. Something goes wrong, somebody marries the wrong person, somebody advances too fast, somebody converts, somebody refuses good advice or bad advice, it didn't matter. It went up in a flash. "

― Norman Rush , Subtle Bodies

5 " One thing you distinctly never want to hear a man you're interested in say softly is that his favorite book in the whole world is The Golden Notebook. Here you are dealing with a liar from the black lagoon and it's time to start feeling in your purse for carfare. "

― Norman Rush , Mating

6 " Very goodlooking people are as a rule more forgetful than the median. Their mothers start it and the world at large continues it, handing them things, picking things up for them, smoothing their vicinity out for them in every way. I on the other hand remember everything. "

― Norman Rush , Mating

7 " Nina said, “Have regular facial expressions.” That was a command from their inventory of facetious devices they used to josh one another out of bad moods. "

― Norman Rush , Subtle Bodies

8 " Now everything was going to be impossible, but better. "

― Norman Rush , Subtle Bodies

9 " And the question was still there of whether their true interior selves—the subtle bodies inside—were still there and functioning despite what age and accident and force of circumstance may have done to hurt them. He meant something like that … that when they had become friends it had been a friendship established between subtle bodies, by which he meant the ingredients of what they were to be … "

― Norman Rush , Subtle Bodies

10 " He was mixing up friendship with acts and atmospheres from the deluded matrix the boys had lived in for a heartbeat in the seventies. She thought, I am your friend, you idiot, and I let you into my perfect body, for Christ’s sake. "

― Norman Rush , Subtle Bodies

11 " In love and mating, ambience is central. "

― Norman Rush , Mating

12 " This shooting star had apparently been sedentarized in my bailiwick-so, good. "

― Norman Rush , Mating

13 " What a datum! I couldn't help thinking over and over. "

― Norman Rush , Mating

14 " This might be good, I thought as I studied the crowd. There were several definitely intelligen​t guys present, not strobe-lig​ht intellects but people who could make you uncomforta​ble in a debate if you got too much beyond what you absolutely had the facts on. "

― Norman Rush , Mating

15 " A utopia I would join in a minute is a society which could be communist or capitalist, anything, except that no woman member of it ever underwent sex unless she was hot. Pretending to be hot bears a distinct resemblance to self-rape, but it’s a rape accompanied by boredom instead of fear. "

― Norman Rush , Mating

16 " Literature is humanity talking to itself. "

― Norman Rush

17 " The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so that you can have all the time you want for reading. "

― Norman Rush

18 " The characters write the plot. Their natures do. "

― Norman Rush

19 " Ah good, I thought, another thesis topic although unfortunately not in my field, id est proving that women are almost invariably the appeasers when fights occur that lead to stalemates "

― Norman Rush , Mating

20 " You could be the first nation to tell your children to ask themselves what work in the world would most become their souls and to prepare to do it. "

― Norman Rush , Mating