The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?

The role of the human brain was to rationalize suffering.

When they started to drain a swamp where birds and fish had lived, for a new housing development down the road from his apartment, Steven watched the protests and the preparations with interest. The bird people were furious, the developers unmovable, and Steven was filled with relief that the fight wasn't his. Nothing here was his... He thought there should have been something sad about how little he was tied up with the place, but instead it felt like freedom. He was free because it wasn't his water here, and they weren't his fish.

At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.

The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?

Diabetes is passed that way -- over and down, like a knight in chess.

I settled in with The Uninvited Guests thinking I knew what kind of Edwardian pleasures were in store: the fraught dinner party in an endangered, rambling house, the feuding family, the rich suitor, the disruptive visitors. The novel has all of those delightful things, but it also defied every one of my expectations. I saw none of it coming. I read it in one breathless sitting, and finished wanting to give it to everyone I know.