Maile Meloy

“He was acting like the man he wanted to be, in hopes that he could become him. He would keep acting until he couldn't stand it anymore, and then he would be the man he was.”

“Chet suddenly wished she had quit teaching the class because of him, that he’d had any effect on her at all.”

“All the while, Everett felt both the threat of disorder and the steady, thrumming promise of having everything he wanted, all at once.”

“The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?”

“We're creating little hedonists,' Frank used to say. 'Nothing will be as pleasurable as this for the rest of their lives. They'll search everywhere for something that can measure up, and nothing will.”

“He held his hands tightly together and cursed his daughter for bringing the terrible world, with its humiliation and longing, back to his door.”

“His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him.”

“Children were experiments, and his had failed.”

“At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.”

“Now, alone on the roof, Valentine looked at her shoes and wished people would either stay or go away, but not constantly coming back and leaving again.”

“I baptize you in the name of the conservation of energy. What comes around goes around.”

“Yvette had never talked about her marriage - she was a smart girl, and she knew you had no right to complain about someone you got all the way to the altar with. You made that choice, even if you were a child when you did it, and the marriage vow was sacred.”

“Diabetes is passed that way -- over and down, like a knight in chess.”

“She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was.”