Quotes from Jenny Offill

The wife has begun planning a secret life. In it, she is an art monster. She puts on yoga pants and says she is going to yoga, then pulls off onto a country lane and writes in tiny cramped writing on a grocery list She thinks she should go off her meds maybe so as to write more fluidly. Possibly this is not a good idea. But only possibly.

What Ann Druyan said: Compressed into a minute-long segment, the brain waves of a woman newly in love sound like a string of firecrackers exploding.

Do you know why I love you?" my daughter asks me. She is floating in the bathwater, her head lathered white. "Why" I say. "Because I am your mother," she tells me.

But the truth is she has good impulse control. That is why she isn't dead. Also why she became a writer instead of a heroin addict. She thinks before she acts. Or more properly, she thinks instead of acts. A character flaw, not a virtue.

There is a story about a prisoner in Alcatraz who spent his nights in solitary confinement dropping a button on the floor then trying to find it again in the dark. Each night, in this manner, he passed the hours until dawn. I do not have a button. In all other respects, my nights are the same.

It has oblique leaves

The wife sits in the backyard with binoculars. She is trying to learn about the birds. She has seen robins and sparrows and wrens. A green-throated hummingbird. She wants to know the name of the black bird with the red wings. She looks it up. It is a red-winged blackbird.

In those last weeks, we drove without talking, trying to outride the heat, each alone in the dream the city had become. I was afraid to speak, to touch his arm even.

Is she a good baby? People would ask me. Well, no, I'd say.

There is a husband who requires mileage receipts, another who wants sex at three a.m. One who forbids short haircuts, another who refuses to feed the pets. I would never put up with that, all the other wives think. Never.

He tells me that smart houses are coming, that soon everything in our lives will be hooked up to the internet of things, blah, blah, blah, and we will be connected through social media to every other person in the world. He asks me what my favored platforms are. I explain that I don't use any of them because they make me feel too squirrelly. Or not exactly squirrelly, more like a rat who can't stop pushing a lever. Pellet of affection! Pellet of rage! Please, please, my pretty!

Sometimes at night I conduct interviews with myself. What do you want? I don't know. What do you want? I don't know. What seems to be the problem? Just leave me alone.

We used to call her Little, Little come here, we'd say. Little, unhand the cat, but then one day she won't let us, "I am big," she says and her face is stormy.

One day in the Little Theater of Hurt Feelings the husband announces that he would like to try a separation. The wife is stunned. He has said nothing to her until now. But the shrink discourages it. "You might as well just get divorced," she says.

But for now my daughter and I stand shivering in front of the meat case. "I'm cold," she says. "Why can't we go? Why do we have to stand here?" There is some kind of meat I am supposed to buy. A kind of meat to go in a meat recipe. "We can go soon," I say. "Just wait. Let me think for a minute. You're not letting me think.

I read a study once about sleep deprivation. The researchers made cat-sized islands of sand in the middle of a pool of water, then placed very tired cats on top of them. At first, the cats curled up perfectly on the sand and slept, but eventually they'd sprawl out and wake up in water. I can't remember what they were trying to prove exactly. All I took away was that the cats went crazy.

Sometimes she plays a game now where she scatters her stuffed animals all over the living room. "Babies, babies," she mutters darkly as she covers them with white napkins. "Civil War Battlefield," we call it.

He's not doing well with this sleep deprivation. There's a reason it's used as a tool of torture. But still, everyone I know is trying to sleep less. Insomnia as a badge of honor. Proof that you are paying attention.

What Singer said: I wonder what these people thought thousands of years ago of these sparks they saw when they took off their woolen clothes?

Sometimes your heart runs away with someone and all it takes is a bandana on a stick.

In some Zen monasteries, gossip is defined as talking about anything not directly in one's gaze.

Every marriage is jerry-rigged. Even the ones that look reasonable from the outside are held together inside with chewing gum and wire and string.

Quiet in the cup. Hard to believe that isn't joy, the way it flies away when I fling it out the window.

Scientists say that the theory of everything is a technical expression, not a metaphysical one. But a lot of people who hang out at this bar seem to have grand unifying theories. I