Quotes from Jennifer Egan

The monkey's face had more emotions than a human's: curiosity, pity, exhaustion, like he'd already seen too much. Danny had to look away.

Years ago, when Sasha and I were struggling with Lincoln, my habit of "fleeing" to my clinic almost cost me my marriage. Since then, I've subjected my impulses to leave for work to a three-step protocol: 1) Is it necessary that I go at this moment? 2) Is there something at home that I want to avoid? 3) Will I be letting anyone down by leaving right now?

We are most reluctant to hurt those who remind us of ourselves.

Standing under the gray sky among so many women, Anna began to understand the collective grief: Lydia had been a last still point amid so much wrenching change.

An army of children: the incarnation of faith in those who weren't aware of having any left.

I feel Angel warm beside me and think how I'll never love anyone this much, how without her I would disappear.

a higher power touched our mother's head and said: Stop what you're doing! Two little girls are waiting to be born, and you need to have them right away, because the world is desperate for their brightness.

The sound of the wind against the sides of the house is exactly like the sound of wolf fur against cardboard.

If he couldn't search or retrieve or view his own past, then it wasn't really his. It was lost.

San Francisco is ours, we've signed our name on it a hundred times: SISTERS OF THE MOON.

It's a pity we're forced to make the choices that govern the whole of our lives when we're so goddamn young.

And Moose heard her happiness then—Oh, the joy that came of dispensing happiness to others, of entering happiness's interlocking circuitry!

So now I am alone and adrift having no idea where Stella and Iona have gone, and this gives me a fading feeling I get sometimes when I think Stella has forgotten me for good, like I'm a particle floating invisibly through space and I might float so far away that I stop existing even to myself. How will I get back?

I am ALONE AND PEACEFUL and that combination is so unusual, it's like meeting someone for the first time.

A good deed needs no excuse.

Vielleicht bestand wahres Glück darin, nicht mehr um das Glück kämpfen zu müssen.

Du bist gesund, meinte er. Morgen sagst du mir, wohin ich dich bringen soll.

If wishing could make men die, there'd be nary a live one left.

I noticed one with short, raven-colored hair who looked not unlike myself (we are interchangeable--the first lesson one learns as a professional beauty).

One horror of motherhood lies in the moments when she can see both the exquisiteness of her child and his utter inconsequence to others. There are so many boys in the world.

I take hold of Lulu's hand and she squeezes my hand back and I whisper very softly close to her ear Lulu let's be secret friends and no one will know except us and she whispers back very softly Friends Without Borders and we squeeze our hands hard and that is our promise. And I wonder if I might be in love with Lulu instead of Chris, or maybe I love them both which seems possible on a pier in the Muskaheegee River but nowhere else.

Dexter liked the Irish, was drawn to them, although time and again they had proved untrustworthy. It wasn't duplicity so much as a constitutional weakness that might have been the booze or might have been what drove them to it. You wanted a mick to help you dream up schemes, but in the end you needed a wop or a Jew or a Polack to bring them off.

There are no Kids at the club at this in-between time, even the ones coming back for dinner are home changing clothes, which means there's nowhere I'm supposed to be and no one I'm supposed to be WITH and no way to be left out because there's nothing to be left out OF. I am ALONE AND PEACEFUL and that combination is so unusual, it's like meeting someone for the first time.

He thought: I'm a guy who wears boots like this. It was the first thing he knew about himself.