Цитаты из книги Zuckerman Unbound

Predictably the two-story apartment building where he'd first lived struck him as a lilliputian replica of the red-brick canopied fortress he'd have described from memory.

Do you know what Chekhov said as a grown man about his youth? He said he'd had to squeeze the serf out of himself drop by drop. Maybe what you ought to start squeezing out of yourself is the obedient son.

If ever there was a man to bury as a Jew it was his father. Nathan would probably wind up letting them bury him as one too. Better as that than as a bohemian.

Zuckerman had been remembering the summer just twenty years ago, that August before he'd left for college, when he read three thousand pages of Thomas Wolfe straight through... ... All he wanted at sixteen was to become a romantic genius like Thomas Wolfe and leave little New Jersey and all the shallow provincials therein for the deep emancipating world of Art. As it turned out, he had taken them all with him.

No' you don't run away from phenomena like Alvin Pepler, not if you're a novelist with any brains you don't. Think how far Hemingway went to look for a lion. Whereas Zuckerman had just stepped out the door.

Zuckerman, sucker though he was for seriousness, was still not going to be drawn into a discussion about agents and editors. If ever there was a reason for an American writer to seek asylum in Red China, it would be to put ten thousand miles between himself and those discussions.

"You're our Marcel Proust, Mr. Zuckerman." Zuckerman laughed. It wasn't exactly how he saw it.

Zuckerman had privately declared a one-year moratorium on all serious decisions arising out of the smashing success.

All this, this luck – what did it mean? Coming so suddenly, and on such a scale, it was as baffling as a misfortune.

Gone were the days when Zuckerman had only to worry about Zuckerman making money: henceforth he would have to worry about his money making money.

Oh, I was a good boy too in my Peter Pan collar, and believed everything Aristotle taught me about literature.

"I thought I would impress you with my brains and instead it's Kierkegaard's brain you're impressed with." "There's always that danger," he said.

Yes' he thought' life has its own flippant ideas about how to handle serious fellows like Zuckerman. All you have to do is wait and it teaches you all there is to know about the art of mockery.

"And you'll get divorced, Nathan? Again?" "Ma, I'm sorry for everyone that I'm compiling such a bad marital record.... .... They're all wonderful, beautiful, devoted girls, you know. There's that to be said for me. I don't bring anything home but the best."

Hers is the cause of righteousness, yours the art of depiction. It really shouldn't take half a lifetime for someone with your brains to figure out the difference.

His feeling for Laura was dead. Writing this book had finished it off. Or maybe finishing the book had given him time to look up at last and see what had died; that was the way it usually worked with his wives.

The following week, with nothing to keep him locked behind the study door where usually he spent his days complicating life for himself on paper, he packed a suitcase and began again to complicate his life in the world.

Увидел – поверил, поверил – знаешь, а знание лучше незнания и незнаемого.

...ты получаешь то, что получаешь, а все остальное должен сделать сам.