Jeanthesecond

“And Lawrence was afraid of the main thing. He had a tendency to talk feverishly all around the main thing, as if bundling it with twine. Presumably if he talked in circles around the main thing for long enough it would lie there, vanquished, panting on its side, like a roped steer.”
― Lionel Shriver, The Post-Birthday World

“But things can be over in horizontal time and just beginning in your body, I’m learning. Sometimes the memory of that summer feels like a spore in me, a seed falling through me.”
― Karen Russell, Swamplandia!

“Even in her trances, even while possessed, my sister was very shrewd about her prospects. A fantasy would collapse like a wave against the rocks of her intelligence. Madness, as I understood it from books, meant a person who was open to the high white whine of everything.”
― Karen Russell, Swamplandia!

“Lovers communicate not inside sentences, but between them. Passion lurks within interstice. It is grouting rather than bricks.”
― Lionel Shriver, The Post-Birthday World