“[Chestnut vendors during Christmas] counting on an ever-replenishing supply of tourists unaware that the smell would always be so much better than the taste” (52). Lol
“He extended an oxford to toe the offended thing into the gutter but thinking better of it, scooped it up off the ground” (64). I annotated in the left margin that the comma should be before “but,” but re-reading it I might be wrong.
“I nearly suggested he go lie down in one of The Brothers’s ‘resting rooms’ situated on every floor and equipped with a very grim folding cot and flattened hypoallergenic pillow to ease and encourage in-office all-nighters” (69). I think it’s cool that they have rooms for office all-nighters.
“In the course of eight hours I guessed that he had injected his visions of Belle with so much meaning his sandy head was close to exploding” (71). Lol
“...look nervous?--but on Jeremy it only managed to endear, hinting at the enormity of emotion stored up in his chest” (72).
“A fire had dialed up in his eyes as he surveyed the transcendent scene around us” (73).
“We had been out on one of our Lost Girls Wednesday nights at a rooftop bar floating high amidst the electric cloud line of Midtown Manhattan” (92).
“I did the math. At this rate I will be paying back my high-interest student loans until I’m sixty. So I got drunk last night and burned my college diploma on the roof of my building, screaming ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at the top of my lungs” (140). OMG! XD
“Was it that suddenly, he knew there could be nothing more meaningful to chase, no superior summit? People always said that was the danger of getting your heart’s desire. Everything became, all at once, both miraculously redeemed and tragically meaningless” (160). Damn.
“Everything felt simple and warm and safe and bright, which I’d eventually recognize as telltale signs of happiness” (165). Nice.
“...giving him a better view of that eternally dapper tower” (173). That’s a nice way to describe the art deco style of the Chrysler Building.
“The note rattled inside me, exposing a truth that hurt like hell” (205).
“Everything was so still and silent and chilled that it felt as though you could swing an ice pick forward and chip the great city into any sky high snow sculpture you could dream up” (215).
“‘I guess I’m the biggest chump of all,’” (243). I feel so bad for M.
“Was this actually happening?” (270). Lol me XD
“‘Let me put it this way,’ I ventured, attempting to translate my answer into Piggelo’s particular dialect of bottomless bottom lines, ‘if you promised me all of the gold in The Brothers’s three-story vaults, I still wouldn’t stay.’ This may have stunned her but of course she didn’t show it” (314). I was like shit! You get it girl!!! You tell her!! XD I am so immensely proud of M!! You go girl!!! ✊🏽 The funny thing is that while I was reading this book and I came to this part of the book where M quits from her job I did the same thing. I courageously quit my awful job at the same time I got to this part. I thought that that was worth mentioning! :D
“He [Scott (M.’s boyfriend who also worked with The Brothers in his lifetime)] had made me a miniature tombstone--my very own commemorative Lucite cube engraved with my name and reading:
IN MEMORIAM
BARTHOLOMEW BROTHERS BANKER
2006-2011” (321). Lol so funny & cute of him to do! XD <3
“‘I’ve been trying to be more philosophical about everything that has happened,’ he said to me, serenely. ‘Everyone kept saying that by working at The Brothers we were on a gilded elevator. If it was an elevator, it was broken. And if it was a ladder, most of its rungs were missing. I’m sure I did all of the right things--everything I was supposed to. But it didn’t add up to what I was told it would add up to.’
‘That may be the great tagline of our generation, you know.’
‘The thing is, it wasn’t the right path, M. It wasn’t the path meant for me. That was the real problem. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I’ve decided that maybe we decide what the grand total will be. The grand total of our life, I mean. Maybe it all depends on the path we pick.” (321-322).
“‘You’re right. I think that’s what I’m trying to say. I hold myself responsible. The world is only as large or as small as we want to believe.’ He exhaled into the chalky winter air. ‘And if we want something, if we really believe in something, we can always find another way to get there.’” (322).
“She had forced herself to find a way to live with, and maybe even find some contentment in, her marriage to Chase--the fake, plastic world she had built” (323).
“Back to school. In varying degrees since leaving College we’d all been baking silently beneath the fluorescent lights of adulthood and office life and misfitting career paths, turning us paler and yellower and more submissive as the calendar months paged by. On some level we all longed to step back and be engulfed by the academic promise of school again--with its crisp printouts of class schedules and syllabi and packs upon packs of sharpened number two pencils” (324).
“‘I’m so happy for you, Belle,’ I told her. It was true. I felt a yolk-colored glow of happiness for her, but also a gray wash of sadness--a sense that life was largely an exercise in trying to go back to something purer and more purposeful that we had lost or overlooked or subconsciously strangled along the way” (324).
“‘I think you need to have reverence for it,’ I agree, ‘but what matters most is being honest with yourself about the present’” (329).
“You will be a grand total of what you spend your time doing in your life--so what do you want to add up to?” (335).
Awakened by James S. Murray
