She is, above all else, tired; she wants more than anything to return to her bed and her book. The world, this world, feels suddenly stunned and stunted, far from everything.

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?

The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.

What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. And there it is... It was death. I chose life.

I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.

Oh, all you immigrants and visionaries, what do you hope to find here, who do you hope to become?