“I’m just like this speed bump in the middle, slowing everyone down because I keep fucking up.”

“I keep waiting to feel old, to feel like a grown-up, but I don't yet. Do you think that's the big secret adults keep from you? That you never feel like a grown-up?”

“What I mean is, I still feel like me. It's not like I wake up and think, I am a responsible adult. I just look in the mirror and see myself. the same stupid person I've been looking at for years.”

“The wanderlust crept up again inside her like a shooting star, a sudden, violent urge to escape disappearing into darkness again. She pushed down the afterglow and focused.”

“This conversation, you will not be surprised to know, was the impetus for their breakup, given that it caused her to realize the emotion that she had thought was her not liking him very much was, in fact, her not liking him at all. Because despite his money and his looks and all the good-on-paper attributes he possessed, he was not a reader, and, well, let's just say that is the sort of nonsense up with which we will not put.”

“She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. "A few hundred," she said."How do you have the time?" he asked, gobsmacked.She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in reflective surfaces? I am reading!"I don't know," she said, shrugging.”

“But the truth was, we had failed, and rather than let anyone else know, we crafted careful excuses and alibis, and wrapped them around ourselves like a cloak to keep out the cold truth.”