Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.

...She felt that nothing could kill her hope now, nothing. She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life.

His tiredness hurt so much it kept him awake.

Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know.

It offended his sense of himself, because he was an individual from an age of individuals, and a string of lights was, like him, an individual thing. No matter how little the thing had cost, to throw it away was to deny its value.

We may freak out globally, but we suffer locally.

He couldn't figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up.