Rina Dave Pandya

“It is easy in retrospect to see why he’d want to go. There are two women who are furious at him. To make one happy, he must take the subway across town and arrive on her doorstep. To make the other happy, he must wear for some infinitely long period of time a hair shirt woven out of her own hair.”
― 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

“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

“In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations that contradict prior beliefs.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation