The Marriage Plot

by Jeffrey Eugenides

Madeleine was worried that there was something paradigmatic in this, that she was destined to go through life being cowed by less capable men.

Anyway, when we finally got up to the Dalai Lama, I asked him, ‘Are you any relation to Dolly Parton?’”

Each time, Leonard was alone, looking forlorn and uncombed like a great big motherless boy.

Kelly Traub had slept with a Sigma Delt guy who kept saying, “Now you see it, now you don’t, now you see it, now you don’t”;

You have to catch all the subtleties for me, don’t you? You and your flair for catching subtleties. It must be nice to be rich and sit around all day catching subtleties.

It was the stupidity of the fortunate and beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.