46 quotes found
“When Sally stopped crying, she found herself alone, the cold draft of the window at her neck, and on both sides, the rows of doors went on and on, diminishing to nothing, the end. 'What fun it is t...”
“All she had ahead of her was the cold water, the slow ballet.”
“Don't they understand what fiction is?”
“Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband's mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, though her stationary had stun...”
“This was the bad version. This version was what later events told her had happened. It was as real as the other. They played simultaneously in a loop, yet Mathilde could never quite believe it. Tha...”
“I had often said that I would write, the wives of geniuses I have sat with. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives who were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with re...”
“What was grief but an extended tantrum to be salved by sex and candy.”
“Ever since the other boy had arrived half way through the semester, he'd been so blue, he was practically iridescent.”
“The glow lasted through the night, beyond the bar's closing, when there were no cabs on the street. And so Mathilde and Lotto decided to walk home, her arm in his, chatting about nothing, about eve...”
“Only when she smiled at him was he finally able to relax.”
“And Lotto beamed with pleasure, preening, eyes darting around to see which kind soul in the room could have sent along the champagne, the force of his delight such that wherever his eyes landed, th...”
“Struggle forms character. No struggle, no character.”
“Did you?' the producer said. 'He's so clownish on the surface, all joke and dazzle. How in the world could you have seen it?''But I did. The moment I met him," she said. "A fucking supernova. Every...”
“Mathilde saw her own face reflected in the window, but no, it was a barn owl on a low branch in the cherry trees. She could barely master herself. She had never expected this. These women, such kin...”
“Sleep sparks a series of pulses across the webs of neurons, pulses like waves; it washes out what is unnecessary and leaves only what's important behind.”
“One by one, they guessed aloud about what Lotto had meant by this sculpture: nautilus, fiddlehead, galaxy. Thread running off its spindle. Forces of nature, perfect in beauty, perfectly ephemeral, ...”
“The beige linoleum floor turned into the ocean, crashed and crashed against Lotto's shins. He sat down. How swiftly things spun. Two minutes ago he'd been a kid, thinking about his nintendo system,...”
“Her hands warming on tea looked like chunks of knitting a child had felted in grubby palms. Enough decades, and a body slowly twists into one great cramp, but there was a time once, where she had b...”
“He had become, after all, her home.”
“We have all had stupid youths,' said Mathilde. 'I find them delicious.”
