This thing about looking for someone less different... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.

Like all books that have that kind of momentum, it starts from word of mouth.

contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century.

I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.

We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute.

When it came down to it, he just wasn't that engaged. You had to be engaged to be a vegetarian; you had to be engaged to sing "Both Sides Now" with your eyes closed; when it came down to it, you had to be engaged to be a mother.

Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.