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Her face didn’t move that much with all the fillers. When she smiled, she looked like some sort of frozen fish trying to escape from a net. A blonde net.
I imagined throngs of women my age underneath the covers in the dead of night, scrolling mindlessly. Many of us used to be up at this hour nursing, comforting crying kids, depositing errant dollar bills as tooth fairies. Now we were all awake, our kids out cold in messy rooms down the hall, our minds spinning, hormones toying with us.
Everything out of her mouth made me cringe. If only I could delete her inappropriate, unfiltered comments.
Publishing a blank novel would be a commentary on the literary world. I could say that I was addressing the reader’s almost nonexistent attention span.
“We’re in our forties. Will our parents ever stop pestering us?”
To enjoy it, you have to sit in one place and stare at it for hours, and then the whole story will slowly unfold just to you inside your brain. It might take you months to find out what happens in the end. It’s a completely solitary endeavor and you can’t do anything else at the same time. Oh, and you need to purchase it up front, hoping you’ll
like it. But if you don’t, there’s no refund. Sorry!
And there are literally millions of other products that look basically identical—some are great and some are terrible, and there’s almost no way to know ahead of...
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That’s what books are supposed to do: connect readers to authors. Readers to each other. That’s why book clubs are so popular! It’s like that mural on Montana: ‘Stories are best when shared.’”
like? Silently resentful coexistence with the occasional one-sided fondle?
I could tell she’d been crying, and I stretched out my arm for a hug. Every so often, it felt like she was a little girl again.
Can one person make another happy in every single way? No. It’s too much to ask.
Loss is not just what’s gone in the present but all of the future plans.
events. The holidays not celebrated together. Life falls apart in shudders, in emails from lawyers, drained bank accounts, trips to the ATM, new forms to fill out at the pediatrician, new boxes to check. Life falls apart in music stations no longer listened to, restaurants not gone to, food no longer eaten, dishes not ordered. Habits. Clothes. Preferences. Washed away.
In death, there is no choice.
In divorce and deception, it’s all
preventable. And yet, it isn’t. Abandonment. Unavailable answers. W...
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Unavailable answers. We don’t c...
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Life falls apart slowly. And just as slowly, we piece it together again. One itty bit at a time. Steps forward. Names changed. New loves discovered. New homes built. Slowly, unsteadily, shakily, and yet, eventually, solidly rebuilt.
Marriage is a mix. Some days are warm, easy, loving. Other days you want to strangle the person because they’ve taken five minutes too long in the shower. But at the base of it all is trust, respect, affection, kindness.