Jenny and the Jaws of Life Quotes

“According to Hannah, real life just happens, whereas stories make sense. When you put real life in print, she says, you show it up for the pointless mess it really is.”
― Jincy Willett, Jenny and the Jaws of Life

“I love you," Kenneth said, with terrible dispassion, "but I would not burn the Library of Alexandria for you"; and Anita, drily sobbing, cried, "You son of a bitch.”
― Jincy Willett, Jenny and the Jaws of Life

“Too bad for the storytellers. Too bad for the sense makers, the apologists, that nothing, then or ever, nothing was inevitable. It's just too bad.”
― Jincy Willett, Jenny and the Jaws of Life

“The future, vague and sad, did not frighten me half as much as knowing that it was not carved in stone.”
― Jincy Willett, Jenny and the Jaws of Life

“Kenneth was a sitting duck. In fewer than three years he would kneel alone in this very room, on the exact spot where he now stood, emptying the contents of his desk into cardboard boxes from the liquor store while his gaunt bitter wife reviled him in the Goldbergs' living room and choked the Goldbergs' big brass ashtray with with unfiltered cigarette butts, and if anyone were then to ask him for the secret of a happy life, he would answer: Stasis.”
― Jincy Willett, Jenny and the Jaws of Life

“I thought, you see, that there must be some connection between money and memorable experience; between rare wine and rare intelligence. In short, I was a romantic idiot.”
― Jincy Willett, Jenny and the Jaws of Life