The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself. No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Despite the fact that he loves books and owns a bookstore, A.J. does not particularly care for writers. He finds them to be unkempt, narcissistic, silly, and generally unpleasant people. He tries to avoid the ones who've written books he loves for fe...

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

You don't choose a book the book chooses you

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary f...

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

There ain't nobody in the world like book people. It's a business of gentlemen and gentlewomen.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

We are not quite novels. The analogy he is looking for is almost there. We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that. In the end, we are collected works. He has read enough to know that there are no collections w...

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

...but what, in this life, is more personal than books?

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Every book is a world.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

A.J. watches Maya in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness,...

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

That spring, Amelia takes Maya to the drugstore and lets her choose any polish color she likes. "How do you pick?" Maya says. "Sometimes I ask myself how I'm feeling," Amelia says. "Sometimes I ask myself how I'd like to be feeling.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

If this were a novel, I'd stop reading right now. I'd throw it across the room.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you're the only person in the room.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

I like all weddings, but isn't it particularly lovely when two grown-ups decide to get married?

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

A good marriage is, at least, one part conspiracy.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

We aren't the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Do you like ?" he asks. "I hate it," she says. "And I don't say that about many things. Teachers assign it, and parents are happy because their kids are reading something of 'quality.' But it's forcing kids to read books like that that make them thin...

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry