Amor Towles

Amor Towles (born October 24, 1964) is an American novelist. His first three novels were New York Times bestsellers.

Quotes

• When I finish writing a novel, I find myself wanting to head in a new direction. That’s why after writing Rules of Civility—which describes a year in the life of a young woman about to climb New York’s socioeconomic ladder—I was eager to write A Gentleman in Moscow—which describes three decades in the life of a Russian aristocrat who’s just lost everything. The Lincoln Highway allowed me to veer again in that the novel focuses on three eighteen-year-old boys on a journey in 1950s America that lasts only ten days.
  The reason I make a shift like this is because it forces me to retool almost every element of my craft. By changing the setting, the era, and the cast of characters, I also must change the narrative’s perspective, tone, and poetics so that they will be true to these people in this situation at this moment in time. Similarly, by changing the duration of the tale—from a year to thirty years to ten days—the structure, pacing, and scope of thematic discovery all have to change.
  • The Lincoln Highway: Q and A. www.amortowles.com. (This Q & A includes a recipe for "Fettuccine Mio Amore", which was mentioned, without a recipe, in The Lincoln Highway.)

• I think that, for the most part, I've have always tried to keep my focus on telling a story without worrying about what it might mean to others. ... Some people really write towards having a message. And, for me it's always been, when someone says, 'What is your book about?' — if I could say to them what my book was about in a few sentences, that book would be a failure — for sure.
• (May 31, 2024)"A Conversation with Amor Towles". UCTVInsight, YouTube. (quote at 6:53 of 58:49)

Rules of Civility (2011)

• The 1930s . . .
  What a grueling decade that was.
  I was sixteen when the Depression began, just old enough to have had all my dreams and expectations duped by the effortless glamour of the twenties. It was as if America launched the Depression just to teach Manhattan a lesson.
  After the Crash, you couldn't hear the bodies hitting the pavement, but there was a sort of communal gasp and then a stillness that fell over the city like snow. The bands laid down their instruments and the crowds made quietly for the door.
  ... Poverty and powerlessness. Hunger and hopelessness. At least until the omen of war began to lighten our step.
  • Rules of Civility: A Novel. Viking Press. 2011. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-670-02269-4.  (observation by the novel's narrator, Katey Kontent)

• Eve Ross . . .
  Eve was one of those surprising beauties from the American Midwest.
  In New York it becomes so easy to assume that the city's most alluring women have flown in from Paris or Milan. But they're just a minority. A much larger covey hails from the stalwart states that begin with the letter I—like Iowa and Indiana and Illinois. Bred with just the right amount of fresh air, roughhousing, and ignorance, these primitive blondes set out from the cornfields looking like starlight with limbs. Every morning in early spring one of them skips off her porch with a sandwich wrapped in cellophane ready to flag down the first Greyhound headed to Manhattan—this city where all things beautiful are welcomed and measured and, if not immediately adopted, then at least tried on for size.
  • p. 14 (observation by the novel's narrator)

Quotes about Amor Towles

• In three bestselling novels over eight years, Amor Towles has established himself as one of our most beloved contemporary novelists, exhibiting a chameleon-esque ability to inhabit vastly different settings and characters in a style uniquely his own, yet never the same from book to book.
  • Leigh Haber, (March 29, 2024)"book review of Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles". Los Angeles Times.

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Amor Towles on Wikipedia
• Media related to Amor Towles on Wikimedia Commons