Best Of Miriam Toews' "A Complicated Kindness"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from A Complicated Kindness: A Novel by Miriam Toews.

And then we just started talking about music because that was sort of the test of potential. Even a Menno sheltered from the world knows not to stick her tongue into the mouth of a boy who owns an Air Supply record. You might stick your tongue into the mouth go a boy who owned some Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but you would not date him on a regular basis, or openly. And then somehow Travis mentioned the name of Lou Reed without acting like a fawning dork about it and I knew then that I waned to be his girlfriend so I stopped talking for a while and tried to act demure by keeping my lips a certain way.

p.23

A few weeks ago my uncle came over to borrow my dad’s socket set and when he asked my dad how he was my dad said oh, unexceptional. Living quietly with my disappointments. And how are you?

I never know if he’s joking when he says things like that or not. He always signs off his Christmas cards to people with: In Sin and Error, Pining…Raymond.

p.26

I thought to myself: Dear Jesus, please let me one day hang out with Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and turn all my grief into hits.

p.134

There was a note on the table. Nomi: Any plans for after graduation? That’s how we communicated large, vague ideas. On paper that can burn up in less than one second. I stared at the words for an exorbitantly long time. 

Then I wrote. Dear Dad: I intend to become a model of courage and dignity.

p.200

But love […] outlasts grief. It does. Love is everything. It is the greatest of these. And I think that we all use whatever is in our power, whatever is within our reach, to attempt to keep alive the love we’ve felt.

p. 243-244

Life being what it is, one dreams not of revenge. One just dreams.

p. 244

She was a good kid. We were all good kids. Amen.

p. 244