“Having a baby, in any case, is never ethical.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“That's not true. I did meet both Laura and my ex-husband in graduate school, but they weren't dating. That would be a better story. I am often thinking of the better story because the actual story is so often boring.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“But he ran a bookstore, managed it, was well read, which we cared about then, whether someone had read the same books we had, and which I try to, have to, care less about now.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“It might be worth mentioning that at that moment I hated Laura, was glad her marriage had fallen apart, that her ceaseless trust in the world had at last been proven foolish. Finding friends in every city she moved to, marrying a man on the strength of what, who knows, everywhere manufacturing happiness, happiness, happiness. But her luck had run out. Her story was still the better story, but finally, thank god, she was miserable in it.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“So, what the fuck? What's wrong with the way I talk?"
"What's wrong with the way I talk?" I rolled my eyes. "What deleted scene in which Scorsese are you from.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Thinking, Better not to speak just yet, better first to figure out what it is you want me to say.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“This part is hard to talk about, I dislike doing it, for that reason I may, forgive me, attempt to be funny.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“I was stuck with myself wasn't I, but here he was being given a chance to walk away and here he was squandering it.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Of course there's a reason this fantasy belongs to childhood. Starting over is difficult and painful and the past isn't dead and buried it isn't even, etc. And the fact is that starting over becomes more so—difficult and painful I mean—the older one gets, for the older one gets the more numerous the ties to life one wishes to leave behind, the more ties therefore to cut. The more ties therefore, later, if one is possessed of what is sometimes called a weak ego and what is sometimes called a conscience, to mend.
What I mean is I'd waited too long.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“He wanted to be hip . . . and that was the problem, that was what made him so square.”
Source: Topics of Conversation