“… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign; it is at least a form of being human.”

“Being wrong about important things is exhausting.”

“It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.”

“Ruth thought of a novel as a great, untidy house, a disorderly mansion; her job was to make the place fit to live in, to give it at least the semblance of order. Only when she wrote was she unafraid.”

“Any contractor who would construct a flat-roofed, two-storey building in Northern New Hampshire was enough of a moron to not know how many assholes a human being had.”

“We are formed by what we desire”

“But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.”