Home > Work > Village Books

Village Books QUOTES

Village Books QUOTES

1 " He’s been here longer than I have and will no doubt spend another fruitless evening trying to talk middle class urban professional moms into buying Hemingway or Mencken instead of Dan Brown, Janet Evanovich, some courageous story of survival in the face of genital mutilation, or whatever the hell else Oprah has told them to buy this month. "

― , Village Books

2 " Trying to make her angry is like trying to find a corner on a bowling ball. "

― , Village Books

3 " He went to India to "find himself" last year, but evidently he wasn't there, and he came back empty-handed. "

― , Village Books

4 " As John Sayles once said, it’s always heartening to see one prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice. "

― , Village Books

5 " Stories are dangerous,” he says. “They can turn us into lifelong spectators. We spend all of our time looking for fictions. They trick us into relinquishing responsibility for our own narrative. "

― , Village Books

6 " I am tired of watching the daily parade of humanity regularly sink to meet my lowest expectations. The flipside of requiring everyone to work in retail is that there is a limit to how long you can work here before you start to view every human encounter as an irritation. I’ve been here for three years now and I believe I have reached that point. If I stay here much longer, I will develop a pathological and possibly irreversible hatred of all humanity. I will turn into Ebeneezer. "

― , Village Books

7 " That’s the other thing about bookstores: things may appear quiet on the surface, but passions run high. When you’re surrounded by the innermost thoughts of some of the world’s greatest minds and greatest perverts (often one and the same), it can have a tangible effect on the brain. Squeeze twenty or so full- and part-time neurotics into a space like this over time and strange things happen. "

― , Village Books

8 " Everyone should work in retail at least once in their lives. Consider it a form of national service. "

― , Village Books

9 " You men. You spend nine months waiting to get out and most of the next seventy years plotting to get back in. "

― , Village Books

10 " I didn’t get around to reading the Lord of the Rings until after I saw Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations, which I thought did a much better job of telling the story than the books. I know the text is legendary and deeply beloved, but it is also slo-ow. It takes forever to get going. Frodo waits something like five years between discovering the ring and leaving the shire. Many characters get little or no introduction, important things happen in flashback or get relegated to the appendices, and the villain never even actually makes an appearance. The real central message isn’t about friendship or singsongy environmentalism, but is something that the late wife of William Burroughs could certainly appreciate: never trust a junkie. Conventional "

― , Village Books

11 " You Catholics. No wonder you invented the Inquisition and set science back 500 years. We’d probably have light sabres and flying cars now if it wasn’t for you fuckers. On the plus side, your high school girls do have cool uniforms. "

― , Village Books

12 " I agree with Hitchens that religious indoctrination should be classified as child abuse. "

― , Village Books

13 " on the surface, but passions run high. When you’re surrounded by the innermost thoughts of some of the world’s greatest minds and greatest perverts (often one and the same), it can have a tangible effect on the brain. Squeeze twenty or so full- and part-time neurotics into a space like this over time and strange things happen. "

― , Village Books

14 " Solitude is an acquired skill. Many people that I know are pathologically terrified of it. "

― , Village Books

15 " it never really worked. She was a book that I was only reading to find out how it ended. She "

― , Village Books

16 " His look is based on the assumption that people frequently mistake eccentricity for genius. "

― , Village Books

17 " With a final wave, I step off the curb and start walking. The world behind me is just smoke and ashes and I think I’ve spent enough time watching it burn. "

― , Village Books