i'm going mad, i told myself. let me not be mad.

You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.

That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.

I watched our friends' wary, intelligent faces droop at our tale. Their shock was a mere shadow of our own, resembling more the goodwilled imitation of that emotion, and for this reason it was a temptation to exaggerate, to throw a rope of superlatives across the abyss that divided experience from its representation by anecdote.

Dying in unfamiliar surroundings miles away from home, it cannot possibly be good. There is a great sadness about that I think.

It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.

Rebecca Goldstein is a rare find among contemporary novelists: she has intellectual muscle as well as a tender emotional reach.