Silly humans. Banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity.

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

. . . he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting.

I feel like there's something terrible and wonderful and amazing that's just beyond my grasp. I have dreams about it. I do dream, by the way. It hovers over me at odd moments. And then it's gone. I feel like I'm always on the brink of something that never arrives. I want to either have it or be free of it.

She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it.

Here is the world, and you live in it, and are grateful. You try to be grateful.

Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation resembles no book I've read before. If I tell you that it's funny, and moving, and true; that it's as compact and mysterious as a neutron; that it tells a profound story of love and parenthood while invoking (among others) Keats, Kafka, Einstein, Russian cosmonauts, and advice for the housewife of 1896, will you please simply believe me, and read it?