WisdomArea — Wisdom & Inspiration

"A bit of theory as we settle down for lunch: the waiter's treatment of Kitty is actually a kind of sandwich, with the bottom bread being the bored and slightly effete way he normally acts with customers, the middle being the crazed and abnormal way he feels around this famous nineteen-year-old girl, and the top bread being his attempt to contain and conceal this alien middle layer with some mode of behavior that at least approximates the bottom layer of boredom and effeteness that is his norm."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"She'd risked everything, and here was the result: the raw, warped core of her life."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. "It's mine."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"You said you were a fairy princess You said you were a shooting star You said we'd go to Bora Bora Now look at where the fuck we are"

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"No one is waiting for me. In this story, I’m the girl no one is waiting for. Usually the girl is fat, but my problem is more rare, which is freckles: I look like someone threw handfuls of mud at my face."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?"

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"...underneath that I'd said something else: we were both a couple of asswipes, and now only I'm an asswipe; why? And underneath that, something else: once an asswipe, always an asswipe."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?"

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"It's finished. Everything went past, without me."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"...our familiar features rinsed in weird adulthood."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"happened as I listened: I felt pain. Not in my head, not in my arm, not in my leg; everywhere at once. I told myself there was no difference between being “inside” and being “outside,” that it all came down to X’s and O’s that could be acquired in any number of different ways, but the pain increased to a point where I thought I might collapse, and I limped away."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out. And I, like a scientist unwittingly inhaling toxic fumes from the beaker I was boiling in my lab, had, through sheer physical proximity, been infected by that same delusion and in my drugged state had come to believe I was Excluded: condemned to stand shivering outside the public library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street forever and..."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"A frenzy of activity that had mostly led him in circles: wasn't that a fairly accurate description of lust? At times Bennie didn't even mind its disappearance; it was sort of a relief not to be constantly wanting to fuck someone. The world was unquestionably a more peaceful place without the half hard-on that had been his constant companion since the age of thirteen, but did Bennie want to live in such a world?"

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"A frenzy of activity that had mostly led him in circles: wasn't that a fairly accurate description of lust?"

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"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."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"But Bennie knew that what he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. An aesthetic holocaust! Bennie knew better than to say this stuff aloud."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"I’m sorry and I believe in you and I’ll always be near you, protecting you, and I will never leave you, I’ll be curled around your heart for the rest of your life."

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

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