Two, she thought, was the most ephemeral age, the age of incipient con — Jane Smiley

"My mind is like a room where the door swings free in the breeze, and many visitors come and go and stay and vanish as they will."

"She often wondered whether cleanliness drove love away. Fastidious, she suspected that life itself was to be found in dirt and disorder, in unknown dark substances that she was hesitant to touch."

"There is something I have noticed about desire, that it opens the eyes and strikes them blind at the same time."

"This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight."

"It is neither floating nor springing. It is power without labor, thrust without force, the very opposite of any sort of aggression, the particular physics of his anatomy, the demonstration and the effect of his personality."

"He had accepted that if you were a bookish person the events in your life took place in your head."