We Need New Names
And the jobs we worked, Jesus—Jesus—Jesus, the jobs we worked. Low-paying jobs. Backbreaking jobs. Jobs that gnawed at the bones of our dignity, devoured the meat, tongued the marrow. —NoViolet Bulawayo
All the Pretty Horses
Sweeter for the larceny of time and flesh, sweeter for the betrayal. Nesting cranes that stood singlefooted among the cane on the south shore had pulled their slender beaks from their wingpits to watch. Me quieres? she said. Yes, he said. He said her name. God yes, he said. —Cormac McCarthy
The Humans
The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do is the act of change. I was something. And now I am something else. —Matt Haig
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart. We are not quite novels. The analogy he is looking for is almost there. […]
Geek Love
The phrase ricochets in my skull. “Need to talk.” All these years of silence. I have intended, and do intend, to dog Miranda until my dying day, but I never meant to talk to her. My heart tries to climb out through my ears. —Katherine Dunn
Beautiful Ruins
A man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it. —Jess Walter
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. —Milan Kundera
The Interestings
They were all quiet for a moment; it was perplexing to know what to do when atrocity suddenly came up against irony. Mostly, apparently, you were supposed to pause at that juncture. You paused and you waited it out, and then you went on to something else, even though it was awful. —Meg Wolitzer
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Sonja stood and walked to the flat, afraid of what she might hear next. At the kitchen table she examined the glass of ice. Each cube was rounded by room temperature, dissolving in its own remains, and belatedly she understood that this was how a loved one disappeared. Despite the shock of walking into an […]
Sideways
The moment two people fall in love there is already sown the seed of tragedy. —Rex Pickett
The Goldfinch
It wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask but still I wanted to know. Did she have nightmares too? Crowd fears? Sweats and panics? Did she ever have the sense of observing herself from afar, as I often did, as if the explosion had knocked my body and my soul into two separate entities […]
The Luminaries
If I have learned one thing from experience, it is this: never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person’s point of view. —Eleanor Catton
Lexicon
The thing to remember was that all the power in the world didn’t stop a bullet. She had been taught chess at the school, years ago, and the point was the pieces differed only in terms of their attacking power. They were all equally easy to kill. Capture. It was called capturing. The lesson was […]
Player Piano
Almost nobody’s competent, Paul. It’s enough to make you cry to see how bad most people are at their jobs. If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. —Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
As I Lay Dying
Of course he’d have to borrow a spade to bury his wife with. Unless he could borrow a hole in the ground. —William Faulkner
Cutting for Stone
No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son. —Abraham Verghese
The Love of a Good Woman
He worked hard, not asking that the work he did fit in with any interests he might have had or have any purpose to it that he might once have honored. No purpose except to carry us both toward that life of lawnmowers and freezers which we believed we had no mind for. I might […]
Water for Elephants
Age is a terrible thief. Just when you’re getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head and silently spreads cancer throughout your spouse. —Sara Gruen
MaddAddam
Blood is thinner than money. —Margaret Atwood
In One Person
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us—not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss. —John Irving
