Quotes from Meg Wolitzer

Faith had taken an interest in her. She had even said she admired her. And now Faith was giving her permission. But permission to do what? The answer wasn't at all obvious.

Families always seem to me like this weird accident." "What do you mean?" Opal asked. "I don't know," said Erica. She gestured with both hands, fingers splayed. "It's almost as if a bunch of people who have absolutely no reason to be together all drew straws and somehow wound up on the same commune.

Books light the fire - whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.

Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defensively, and everyone who was outside the walls—even if you'd once been best friends—was now just that, outsiders.

No one else knew what went on inside you; no one else cared.

I open the journal now and pick up the pen, but I can't bring myself to write a word.

He was a little young to go crazy, but it happened to people.

And I also know that pain can seem like an endless ribbon. You pull it and you pull it. You keep gathering it towards you, and as it collects, you really can't believe that there's something else at the end of it. Something that isn't just pain.

He couldn't tell her that what he wanted now, more than anything, was to fall asleep beside her. No touching, no kissing, no stimulation. No sensation, no consciousness. Just the act of sleeping beside someone you liked to be with. Maybe that was love.

You might even envy us—him for all the power vacuum-packed within his bulky, shopworn body, and me for my twenty-four-hour access to it, as though a famous and brilliant writer-husband is a convenience store for his wife, a place she can dip into anytime for a Big Gulp of astonishing intellect and wit and excitement.

Everyone needs a wife; even wives need wives. Wives tend, they hover. Their ears are twin sensitive instruments, satellites picking up the slightest scrape of dissatisfaction. Wives bring broth, we bring paper clips, we bring ourselves and our pliant, warm bodies. We know just what to say to the men who for some reason have a great deal of trouble taking consistent care of themselves or anyone else.

I want an uncircumscribed world.

People wanted one another to do something. They wanted someone to say the thing that they could then take into themselves and transform into something else.

You want to know whether the problems that you teenagers feel–will they follow you over the rest of your lives? Will your hearts always be aching?

Faith was one of those people. Greer had started to see, who was seductive to almost everyone. Seduction was a power move to Faith, and maybe even a compulsion, but it seemed to happen effortlessly, and was in the service of a greater good.

You got caught up in some fantasy, and now you can't see anything at all.

I know we live in a very sexist world, and a lot of boys do nothing except get in trouble, until one day they grow up and dominate every aspect of society. But girls, at least while they're still girls and perform well, seem to do everything better for a while. Seem to get the attention.

Joe once told me he felt a little sorry for women, who only got husbands. Husbands tried to help by giving answers, being logical, stubbornly applying force as though it were a glue gun. Or else they didn't try to help at all, for they were somewhere else entirely, out walking in the world by themselves. But wives, oh wives, when they weren't being bitter or melancholy or counting the beads on their abacus of disappointment, they could take care of you with delicate and effortless ease.

But of course people were different, she remembered; they were allowed to be different.

It wasn't easy to understand how the love between two other people could diminish you. If those two people were still accessible to you, if they called you all the time, if they asked you to come into the city for the weekend as you'd always done, then why should you feel, suddenly, intensely lonely?

I hadn't known that if you hold on, if you force yourself as hard as you can to find some kind of patience in the middle of all your impatience, things can change. It's big, and it's always incredibly messy. But there's no way around the mess.

If love was real, then these bodily, human details could seem insignificant.

The voice. It doesn't just matter what you say. It matters who does the saying. It matters whose voice it is.

ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY, the women were waking up.