Amor Towles Quotes

The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

My favorite thing about New York is the view, the skyline.

I don't think I'd like Manhattan anymore. My mother-in-law lives there, and you go there. But I like looking at it from a distance. It's a fantastic sight - every time, it awes me.

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline.

Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

I remember perfectly my first trip to New York, when I was on the bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan, when I saw the skyscrapers. It was like an incredible dream.

I wanted to experience New York, to look up and see buildings.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

When I show up in New York, and I look at the skyline, it's like showing up in a mountain range. My gaze goes toward the most impressive-looking climb. It's always gone to the top of the World Trade Center.

Manhattan, after eight years here, still reminds me of Hong Kong. There are parts of Chinatown that are the spit and image of streets in Wan Chai, and I am held in thrall by the Chrysler building as much as I was by I.M. Pei's Bank of China Tower.

our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.

Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.

Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh, why can't I?

Their desire was silent yet magnificent, like a thousand daisies attuning their faces toward the path of the sun.

I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder

Lo! body and soul!--this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land,--the South And the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.

Vehement silhouettes of Manhattan - that vertical city with unimaginable diamonds.

There are things you can’t reach. But You can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open.

The rainbow bursts like magic on mine eyes! In hues of ancient promise there imprest.

But if one's dreams having to come true was the only referendum on whether they were beautiful, or worth dreaming, well then, no one would wish for anything. And that would be so much sadder.

Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time.

Hawaii made the mouth of her soul water.

With a stroke of love on the canvas of my soul I'm painting a perfect world with shades of Michelangelo With each promise made in every heart that knows we can live in a perfect world in shades of Michelangelo I hear songs of children echo in the sky I hear songs of children a tomorrow so bright!

Out of defeat can come the best in human nature. As Christians face storms of adversity, they may rise with more beauty. They are like trees that grow on mountain ridges -- battered by winds, yet trees in which we find the strongest wood.