Quotes from Lydia Millet

When we pushed away from the moorings various parents waved from the porch and others clustered on the dock. We rushed, worried that they'd betray us with last-minute asinine chitchat. Sure enough, one dimwit yelled: "Did you remember your inhaler?" (Two of us were asthmatics.) "Shut up! Shut up!" we implored, hands over ears. None of us wanted to see a man go down that way. "And what about the EpiPens?" shouted the low-status mother.

if you're the kind of person who wants to know what's at the end of the universe, what's at the edge of being...and comprehension settles on you that you'll never know, despair can well up.

Dragonflies dipped over the surface, brilliant tiny helicopters of green and blue. "They live ninety-five percent of their lives underwater," said Jack helpfully. He was an insect fan. A fan of all wildlife, in fact. "In nymph form. You know, larvae. Dragonfly nymphs have big huge jaws. They're vicious predators." "Is that interesting?" asked Jen, cocking her head. Not mean, just speculative. She hadn't decided.

He'd seen firsthand how raw parenting made you. Might as well strip your clothes off and run down High Street in a hail of gunfire. That was being a parent.

This is why parents want grandchildren. Really they want their own children back again, they long to feel that vanished and complete love.

There's that common expression that goes: Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. But a knife is better than nothing.

I SLEPT LATE the next morning because I'd woken up every time Jack tossed or turned, worried I'd given him nightmares. When I got up, the Cobra had weighed anchor. As far as I could see, there was the flatness of the ocean

One thing. I've got experience with explosives. Another thing. I've got explosives.

Let God leave us! Let us grow up. Let us walk forward on our own. Because we need the silence of the holy: we need the sacred and equally we need its maddening silence. And in the curious privacy and relief of that silence we can go out into the chaos and commit a thousand acts of minor and gleeful splendor all our own. If it's our tragedy to be left by God, then let it also be our luck.

The unlit chandelier loomed over us, a dim glass jellyfish in the dark reaches of the ceiling. Candles sputtered on the table.

Sailors broke down the creamy high-end tents, packed them into neat small bundles and loaded them and the yacht kids into the powerboat. "Goodbye," said James to me before he boarded. We shook hands on it. "I fear we will not meet again. From here to eternity." "OK," I said. "But what's your Snapchat?" "I'm not allowed Snapchat." "Instagram, then.

The yacht kids had left us their bag of marshmallows. Pastel colors but full-sized, a rare combo. Jack was delighted. He roasted six at a time, his fingers getting so gooey I had to wash them for him in the lapping tidewater when he was done eating.

THE PARENTS HAD been close in college but hadn't gotten together as a group since then. Until they picked this season for their offensively long reunion. One had been heard to say: "Our last hurrah." It sounded like bad acting in a stupid play. Another one non-joked, "After this, we'll see each other next at someone's funeral." None of them cracked a smile.

One man's weakness is another man's mercy.

To hear Chip talk you'd think every Nebraskan male knows how to put a horseshoe on a mule. They know how to bring forth grain from dirt, or what a combine harvester is. They get what happens to that brought-forth grain, the steps before the Cheerios. The women knit long underwear and are adept at fruit canning.

I felt an itch and thought, Is there a tick crawling on me? Right this minute? Burrowing into my skin? And then I thought, Wait. Forget the tick. Why are we always complaining? We get to be alive.

In movies, makeovers were treated like a triumph of the human spirit. It suggested we'd had a low bar for triumph, in recent history. A dash of lipstick qualified, a haircut and some styling gel. A new outfit. That was what the human spirit had turned into.

After the worst had passed Ian dried his eyes and spoke of philosophy. It's like the world is awesome? And also it sucks.

We don't want to be the conquistadors. We want to be Charles Darwin.

I thought: Enh, they'll get used to it. Children grow up. Children leave.

For him freedom meant doing exactly what you wanted all the time. Was that freedom for everybody?

America had once ruled the earth, he said. But it had never bothered to educate its people. So now it was a country of ignorant peasants, a noisy and stupid rabble.

Life is for trying. Don't you see?

AT THAT TIME in my personal life, I was coming to grips with the end of the world. The familiar world, anyway. Many of us were. Scientists said it was ending now, philosophers said it had always been ending. Historians said there'd been dark ages before. It all came out in the wash, because eventually, if you were patient, enlightenment arrived and then a wide array of Apple devices.