# Table for Two  ## Metadata - Author: [[Amor Towles]] - Full Title: Table for Two - Category: #books ## Highlights - “Dismissed!” shouted Irina that night in their little apartment. “How does one get fired from Communism!” ([Location 136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=136)) - Tags: [[orange]] - And in that moment, Pushkin felt a great sense of joy. For to serve the ones we love and receive their approval in return, need life be any more complicated than that? ([Location 206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=206)) - Tags: [[orange]] - If there is a terrain conducive to apple trees, within a few generations there will be all manner of apple trees growing branch to branch. ([Location 279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=279)) - Tags: [[orange]] - The human race is famously adaptive, but there is nothing that a human will adapt to more quickly than an improved standard of living. ([Location 293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=293)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Once her husband had been freed by Bolshevism from the quasi-serfdom of the old regime, he had been revealed as a man of considerable talents; ([Location 306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=306)) - Tags: [[orange]] - It was a common misconception—or so her thought process unfolded—that Communism guaranteed an identical life for all. What Communism actually guaranteed is that in place of lineage and luck, the State would determine who should get what after taking careful account of the greater good. ([Location 313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=313)) - Tags: [[orange]] - The serious writer sweats at the forge of his imagination while hammering out sentences on the anvil of language, and so on. ([Location 679](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=679)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Suffice it to say that at the fork in the road, offer a young man an extra fifty dollars a week in exchange for a modest adjustment to his dreams, and you will have him by the throat. ([Location 787](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=787)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Never mind that practicing genuineness is something of a contradiction in terms. ([Location 1322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=1322)) - Tags: [[orange]] ## New highlights added May 16, 2024 at 8:32 AM - Traipsing after a beautiful young thing late into the night, going from one trendy spot to the next and trying rather desperately to think of something witty to say while pouring a well-aged Bordeaux at our own expense . . . Really. At this stage, who can be bothered? ([Location 2766](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=2766)) - akin to the inflating of zeppelins with flammable gases. ([Location 3254](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=3254)) - Tags: [[orange]] - There are elements of my most catastrophic romances that I miss. So let us agree that missing is not at the heart of the matter. ([Location 3813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=3813)) - Tags: [[orange]] - —Now I’ve seen everything, he said. Eve took a sip of her coffee and smiled at sudden thoughts of her great-aunt Polly. Clad in black from head to toe, her needlepoint never far from reach, proper Aunt Polly from Bloomington, Indiana, also liked to let people know when she had seen everything. What was it about that phrase, mused Eve, that made it so popular with those who had no business using it? ([Location 4576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=4576)) - One could enter one’s final days laden down or light-footed, and Charlie was committed to choosing the latter. ([Location 4952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=4952)) - Where does a sparkle like that come from? Wendell found himself wondering, with a touch of envy. ([Location 5366](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=5366)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Like the wind that spins a windmill, money comes out of nowhere, sets the machinery in motion, then disappears without a trace. ([Location 5882](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CDB5F53V&location=5882))