Quotes from Meg Wolitzer

Crema Seamans," Ethan repeated thoughtfully. "It's like a soup made from ... various semens. A medley of semens. It's a flavour of Campbell's soup that got discontinued immediately." "Stop it, Ethan, you're being totally graphic," said Cathy Kiplinger. "Well, he is a graphic artist," said Goodman.

Everyone tended to believe everything was their fault; maybe it was just hard to imagine, when you were still fairly young, that there were some things in the world that were just not about you .

Was this the epiphany of adult life, that it actually wasn't exciting and vast in possibilities, but was in fact as enclosed and proscribed as childhood?

Every marriage is just two people striking a bargain," he went on in a softer tone. "I traded, you traded. So maybe it wasn't even.

She had seen that look on the faces of lovers in restaurants, on the secret: a secret, meaningful glance exchanged between two people. There seemed to be a conspiracy of passion in the world.

Will your hearts always be aching? Is that what you are asking me?" Goodman shifted in discomfort. "Something like that," he said. "Yes," said the counselor in a suddenly plangent voice. "Always they will be aching. I wish I could tell you something else, but I wouldn't be telling the truth. My wise and gentle friends, this is the way it will be from now on." No one could say anything. "We are so, so fucked," Jules finally said,

After you slept with a woman, she took away with her a small hunk of you. It wasn't bad, as long as the relationship went on. It was something you didn't mind giving up, because it would always be close by. It was only when things ended that you really felt the loss.

It was too easy. Letting go also meant other things, things people never discussed. There were restrictions; everything always had to be cathartic these days.

It did not make Helen feel worse, though, as she had thought it might. It occupied her; it gave her a project to work on. She and Ray had shared almost nothing in years. Grief didn't count, because in a way it was nothing; there wasn't anything in it to hold on to, just wide-open empty space.

You are the only one I can trust about this," Ash said. Which was maybe just another version of what Cathy Kiplinger had said to Jules: you are weak.

Language only felt infinite; instead, everyone swam through surprisingly narrow channels when they spoke or wrote.

certain concrete signs of optimism were no longer as central a part of the school experience: the smell of pencils, for instance, with their suggestion of woodshop and campgrounds and the promise of some precocious kid's standout in-class essay.

I've always sort of felt that you prepare yourself over the course of your whole life for the big moments, you know? But when they happen, you sometimes feel totally unready for them, or even that they're not what you thought. And that's what makes them strange. The reality is really different from the fantasy.

Whenever I give a talk at colleges I meet young women who say, 'I'm not a feminist, but . . .' By which they mean, 'I don't call myself a feminist, but I want equal pay, and I want to have equal relationships with men, and of course I want to have an equal right to sexual pleasure. I want to have a fair and good life. I don't want to be held back because I'm a woman.

for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.

Irony was new to her and tasted oddly good, like a previously unavailable summer fruit.

The idea that something had been done to you seemed to implicate you, even though no one said it did, making your body—which usually lived in darkness beneath your clothing—suddenly live in light. Forever, if someone found out, you would be a person with a body that had been violated, breached. Also, forever you would be a person with a body that was visible and imaginable.

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 would soften, the irony would be mixed in with seriousness, and the years would shorten and fly.

Sadness, excitement, then sadness again; it all rose and fell like the sounds of skaters scuffing the floor of the rink. Hold tight! she thought, conveying this to both herself and Cory, thinking of them in bed together, and the joint effort couples had to make to be a couple, and stay a couple. If one let go, then that was it, both of them fell. Hold tight! she thought, imagining his body, and her own much smaller body against it.

Love transcended breath, eczema, fear of sex, and an imbalance in physical appearance. If love was real, then these bodily, human details could seem insignificant.

the Iraq war was the Ishtar of wars.

Love was a fish factory—love, with all its murk and stink. You had to really love someone to live with him or her in close quarters.

Or maybe they don't even want babies, some of these women, and life opens out to them in an endless field of work. And once in a while the world responds in a big way, letting them in, giving them a key, a crown. It does happen, it does. But usually it doesn't.

They were all just countless cells that had joined together to make this group in particular—this group that Julie Jacobson, who had no currency whatsoever, suddenly decided she loved.