Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill

- And that phrase - "sleeping like a baby." Some blonde said it blithely on the subway the other day. I wanted to lie down next to her and scream for five hours in her ear. 

- This is another way in which he is an admirable person. If he notices something is broken, he will try to fix it. He won't just think about how unbearable itvis that things keep breaking, that you can never fucking outrun entropy. 

- I decided to make my class read creation myths. The idea is to go back to the beginning. In some, God is portrayed as a father, in others, as a mother. When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere. 

- But my agent has a theory. She says every marriage is jerry-rigged. Even the ones that look reasonable from the outside are held together inside with chewing gum and wire and string. 

- The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind. 

Lovers at the Chameleon Club Paris 1932 - Francine Prose

Staying awake seemed like a gift until, as so often happens with gifts, it became a burden.

Belief can be very seductive if what the person believes in is you.

Your lover's jealously knows you better than you do.

There are some people who remain your best friends even if you haven't seen them for ages, and others with whom you start from scratch every time.

How ashamed most of us would be, if we were reminded of some past behavior, some attitude that we maintained while under the delusion that we were in love - and were loved in return.

I could stay out till dawn with my friends without worrying about nannies or diapers or those childhood illnesses that age mothers prematurely before turning out to be nothing.

Strange, how certain individuals keeps appearing in our lives, though not necessarily the people whom we would have chosen.

At what age do men start walking with their shoulders turned out, so their elbows are facing backwards? A man walking like that has crossed the line from young man to an old one.

Time makes it hard to remember how the racket of passion drowns out the measured voices of layalty and common sense.

Nothing fuels bravery more than the lack of the will to live.

Interpreter of maladies stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

She wore a navy blue poplin raincoat over gray sweatpants and white sneakers, looking, at thirty-three, like the type of woman she'd once claimed she would never resemble.