“Marrying Cal, the scion of a family whose wealth dated to the Industrial Revolution and had multiplied through every turn of the American economy since, ought to have eased her worries about failing to climb as high as she believed she deserved. But the money was his, not theirs. The unspoken power this gave him kept her from asking: Why don't you stay home?”

“Shut up, you fat water buffalo, rolling in the mud of other people's lives, is what she wanted to say. But she bit her tongue and reminded herself of how Mrs. Mahmoud had held her hand through Abdul's birth, which made her think that if she had found strength enough to push him out, she could hold her meanest comments in. At this moment, it seemed harder.”

“She ate ramen noodles from the vending machine, their texture just a few molecular recombinations from the Styrofoam cup containing them.”

“Jacob wore a tetchy air of mild resentment that Paul couldn't begin to understand. He was forty and his father was bankrolling him; what could he possibly feel aggrieved about? He pushed unrealized potential before him like a baby carriage.”

“Debbie's facts coincided miraculously with her opinions”

“[s]he was a compulsive pessimist, always looking for the soft brown spot in the fruit, pressing so hard she created it.”

“Stumble on joy"--the phrase had knocked something loose in him. Joy: What did it feel like? Trying to remember, he was overcome by longing. He knew satisfaction, the exhilaration of success, contentment, and happiness to the extent he could identify it. But joy?”