Quotes from Jennifer Egan

I don't know what happened to me," he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't." Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. "You grew up, Alex," he said, "just like the rest of us.

In this story, I'm the girl no one is waiting for.

Later, in bed, she smooths my forehead with her cool hand. "He's had a hard time, Drew," she says. "Is it too much to ask you to be patient with him?" "He's not our son. I don't know him, and neither do you." "He's family," she says. "Isn't that enough?

The Clubhouse is both spartan and lavish—the tricky balance required by the hardy rich. My distrust of the wealthy and the famous is prejudice, I'm well aware. But my patients have so little—they'd inherit the earth today if there were any justice

Looking up at scattered, blinking stars can feel like floating above them and looking down. The universe will seem to hang beneath you in its milky glittering mystery.

You will never know how much I understand you.

They resumed walking. Alex felt an ache in his eyes and throat. "I don't know what happened to me," he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't." Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. "You grew up, Alex," he said, "just like the rest of us.

Nisam se nimalo sramio svojih poslova jer shva?am ono što o?ito gotovo nitko drugi ne razumije: da je vrlo mala razlika izme?u posla u visokoj zelenoj staklenoj zgradi na Aveniji Park i skupljanja sme?a u parku, tako mala da jedva da i postoji osim u ljudskoj mašti. Zapravo, možda je uop?e i nema.

Your throat tightens up and your eyes get wet as you watch their faces go from stony to sad, and it's all kind of moving and sweet except that you're not completely there—a part of you is a few feet away, or above, thinking, Good, they'll forgive you, they won't desert you, and the question is, which one is really "you," the one saying and doing whatever it is, or the one watching?

And, see, those metaphors—'up front' and 'out in the open'—are part of a system we call atavistic purism. AP implies the existence of an ethically perfect state, which not only doesn't exist and never existed, but it's usually used to shore up the prejudices of whoever's making the judgments.

There's a fine line between thinking about somebody and thinking about NOT thinking about somebody (...).

Jules put his arm around her. "If you'd asked me this morning, I would have said we were finished," he said. "All of us, the whole country—the fucking world. But now I feel the opposite." Stephanie knew. She could practically hear the hope sluicing through her brother. "So what's the answer?" she asked. "Sure, everything is ending," Jules said, "but not yet.

Ted deliberated this question while downing three espressos in the hotel lobby, letting the caffeine and vodka greet in his brain like fighting fish.

repetitive dullness and infantile content of profanity

I've led a sheltered, virtuous life," she said.

sunshade he wore to the ring failed to conceal the freshets of tears that coursed from his small, cruel eyes.

It's 1991, and a lot of things that are about to happen haven't happened yet.

Sasha and Drew are a braid of elbows and shoulders and pockets, which presumably keeps them warmer than you.

Listen to me, Sasha, he said. You can do it alone. But it's going to be so much harder.

He listened for muddiness, the sense of actual musicians playing actual instruments in an actual room. Nowadays that quality (if it existed at all) was usually an effect of analogue signaling rather than bona fide tape—everything was an effect in the bloodless constructions Bennie and his peers were churning out.

it was a restless, desperate wish for something to change. Anything. Even if the change brought a certain danger. He'd take danger over sorrow every time.

An entire generation will throw off the fetters of rote commitment in favor of invention, hope—and we, their children, will try to locate the moment we lost them and worry that it was our fault.

Once the new children had become your allies, it was wrenching to leave them.

The ladies, whose curved fingernails had been lavished with the nuanced paintwork normally reserved for museum-quality surfboards, listened with barely repressed hilarity.