Rina Dave Pandya

“When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“Her neighbor’s husband fell in love with a girl who served coffee to him every morning. She was twenty-three and wanted to be a dancer or a poet or a physical therapist. When he left his family, his wife said, “Does it matter to you how foolish you look? That all our friends find you ridiculous?” He stood in the doorway, his coat in his hand. “No,” he said. The wife watched her neighbor get fat over the next year. The Germans have a word for that. Kummerspeck. Literally, grief bacon.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“The wife reads about something called “the wayward fog” on the Internet. The one who has the affair becomes enveloped in it. His old life and wife become unbearably irritating. His possible new life seems a shimmering dream. All of this has to do with chemicals in the brain, allegedly.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“Are animals lonely?
Other animals, I mean.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation