Crossroads

by Jonathan Franzen

I want to be liked might have been the most honest words she’d ever uttered.

The throat of the mailbox made a rusty-jointed gulp as the letter went down it.

He now saw that his supposed self-discipline, the outstanding study habits his parents and his teachers had always praised, had not been discipline at all. He’d excelled at school because he’d enjoyed learning things, not because he had superior willpower. As soon as Sharon introduced him to more intense forms of pleasure, he discovered how hopelessly undeveloped the muscles of his will really were.

That you have a happy marriage. That you have no idea what it’s like to look at a girl in a summer dress and wish a terrible life on her, a life as terrible as your own.

Perry had not yet developed the fascination with weather that every adult seemed to have.

In her mind’s eye, her thoughts were laid out like snacks on a lazy Susan. They weren’t evaporating the way thoughts were supposed to. They just sat there, going round and round, available for second helpings.

It’s interesting to imagine you as a person more or less like me, trying to be good, trying to serve God, but constantly doubting yourself.

How sharp the discontinuity between fantasy and reality! How disorienting the step from the generality of desire into the specificity of her kissing style,

Outward the ripples of harm expanded: Judson would henceforth be a boy with a mentally ill brother.

Even his sharpness was sweet to her. She and Bradley had never come close to being sharp with each other. It required long years of togetherness.