29 quotes found
“If someone said 'diametrically,' could 'opposed' be far behind?”
“There was no life Dennis burned to live except, it seemed, a life that wasn't depressed.”
“Twitter," said Manny, waving his hand. "You know what that is? Termites with microphones.”
“No, of course not. I just feel content, she said carefully.Thats an old persons word, said Ethan.”
“Wasn't the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn't have to wear a tie?”
“No, of course not. I just feel content,” she said carefully.“That’s an old person’s word,” said Ethan.”
“But this post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it; art was still central, but now everyone had to think about making a living too, and they did so with a kind of sc...”
“But, she knew, you didnt have to marry your soulmate, and you didnt even have to marry an Interesting. You didnt always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or ...”
“For while they'd stayed close during the absurd years of his sharp rise, having children had knocked it all into a different arrangement. The minute you had children you closed ranks. You didn't pl...”
“Is there anything sadder than the scrawniest little piece of uneaten chicken at a dinner party?Hmm, said Jules. Yes. The Holocaust.”
“It wasn't easy to understand how the love between two other people could diminish you. If those two people were still accessible to you, if they called you all the time, if they asked you to come i...”
“Once, a few years earlier, Jules had gone to see a play at Ashs theater, and afterward, during the talkback, when the audience asked questions of the playwright and of Ash, whod directed the produc...”
“The mystery of desire was way beyond the conceptual abilities of Jules Jacobson. It was like... robotics. Just another subject that she couldnt understand at all.”
“After a certain age, you felt a need not to be alone. It grew stronger, like a radio frequency, until finally it was so powerful that you were forced to do something about it.”
“Soon, she and the rest of them would be ironic much of the time, unable to answer an innocent question without giving their words a snide little adjustment. Fairly soon after that, the snideness wo...”
“...You want to know whether the problems that you teenagers feelwill they follow you over the rest of your lives? Will your hearts always be aching? Is that what you are asking me?Goodman shifted i...”
“Dennis was present, still present, and this, she thought as she stayed landed against him, was no small talent.”
“Though Jonah felt transfixed inside his own childhood, no one else saw him as a child. He was already over the hump of middle age, heading rapidly toward those year that no one like to speak of. Th...”
“We had a good marriage," he said. "I just thought it would be so much longer." Then he shrugged, and coughed away a sob, this thin man in his sixties with the soft androgynous face that aging seeme...”
“But here was where the question of talent became slippery, for who could say whether Spirit-in-the-Woods had ever pulled incipient talent out of a kid and activated it, or whether the talent had be...”
“I always thought talent was everything, but maybe it was always money. Or even class. Or if not class exactly, connections.”
“She understood that it had never just been about talent: it had also always been about money. Ethan was brilliant at what he did, and he might well have made it even if Ashs father hadnt encouraged...”
“Jealousy was essentially "I want what you have," while envy was "I want what you have, but I also want to take it away so you can't have it.”
