The State We're In Quotes

“I wasn’t the sort of person who struck up conversations with strangers.”
― Ann Beattie, The State We're In: Maine Stories

“Adirondacks must sit in those uncomfortable wooden chairs with the seats tilted so deeply backward that your knees sprang up like a ventriloquist’s dummy as the wood pressed into the back of your thighs. Otherwise, why would they be so named?”
― Ann Beattie, The State We're In: Maine Stories

“Startled starlings flew up out of the high grass, their black whorl a little tornado that did not touch down and therefore did no damage. They disappeared like a momentary perception above Yancey’s head, fanning out and flying west. Or like the clotted words crammed into a cartoon bubble.”
― Ann Beattie, The State We're In: Maine Stories

“Might as well wear loafers without socks. Or take out a membership at the Reading Room on the path above the beach—the Reading Room, where the joke was that there wasn’t a book in the entire place.”
― Ann Beattie, The State We're In: Maine Stories

“Then the auctioneer introduced himself [,,,,]. He started to speak into the microphone, a maddening, jammed-up sequence of words that crashed like bumper cars, after which everything sorted itself into some kind of sense again, and after the fact you could understand most of what he'd said.”
― Ann Beattie, The State We're In: Maine Stories