The Ten-Year Nap Quotes
"Almost everything in these women’s homes required a plug. Voltage stuttered through the curls of wire, and if you put your ear to one of the complicated clocks in any of the bedrooms, you could hear the burble of industry deep inside its cavity. Something was quietly happening."
"The world would not love and protect you. You had to know how to do something well. This was different from a passion for your work, and while it was always best to have one of those, no one could give it to you or tell you how to acquire it."
"Money was forced away from them in the wind tunnel, but then the wind eventually shifted so it blew the other way, bringing more money with it."
"Everyone wanted forward motion; everyone wanted to be part of something that moved."
"It was just like waking up from a dream in tears: You weren’t sure what you’d been so upset about, but you were just relieved that it was over."
"The paradox was that Leo adored her but wasn’t always interested in how she spent her time."
"The mornings could be sluggish and harsh, she still loved the period after the school day ended, when they spent a little time together that wasn’t rushed."
"You were the gatekeeper and nerve center and the pulsing, chugging heart of your family, the one whom everyone came to and needed things from."
"Life in that office, at first, had been crisp and collegial."
"They knew that she loved her son and that she loved string theory. The two sides of her life did not have to do battle like fiery forces."
"You should fish, she’d said, or drive, or walk along a city street or a country lane as you tell them that you and their father are breaking up, or that you are dying."
"In the background of Amy’s apartment, there might be a crash and shouting and the roar of bathwater running unchecked from a tap."
"Deep inside the house, with its various levels and echoing surfaces that gave off the forlorn quality that was often a side effect of newness, she examined the constellations lining her ceiling and sang to herself a song that was both melancholy and beautiful."
"Life with children was bigger than life without them, these mothers were convinced, and so the childless women could seem austere and prissy, though this could never, ever be said aloud, for it was judgmental and certainly unfair."
"The ground had been partly stripped and strafed, and you didn’t even realize it until you found yourself standing on the street with an excited, secret couple, around whom entire luxuriant fields flowered."
"Marriage and children sometimes divided friends; the one or two women Amy knew well who had remained single and childless seemed almost unaware of the astonishing differences between their life and hers."
"The empire hadn’t collapsed, and neither had the world. Mrs. Thatcher, herself the mother of a somewhat willful son, had said in interviews that she knew she was right about the birching decision, just as she knew she was right about the other decisions she made much later when she became PM."
"There was no cure for the oceanic exhaustion that overwhelmed them. If you were a working mother you would always lose in some way, and if you were a full-time mother you would lose too."
"A mentor, she knew, took pleasure from the achievements of the mentored. In their absence the mentor was personally insulted."
"‘I should make an effigy of him,’ Donald said one afternoon upon coming home from work to find Jill slumped sadly at the desk she had set up in their bedroom."
"What Jill didn’t understand, Donald explained when she questioned him, was that men eventually must kill their mentors."
"But of course it wasn’t the end; it couldn’t possibly be."
"It’s actually a good thing that you’re getting out of academia. It’s such a surreal place; it has no real relevance to the outside world."
"I don’t know anything about film," Jill said. "I only know about school. I’ve been in school forever."
"THE YOUNG MALE DEMOGRAPHIC IS ESSENTIAL," Selby wrote in a fax. "IF WE DON’T HAVE THAT, PEOPLE, WE ARE FUCKED."
"A parent who commits suicide, people said, leaves a door open for the child to do the same thing someday too, as if following the parent into oblivion."
"Rise, sorrow, ’neath the saffron sister tree."
"We can’t have an entire world of extroverts," the pediatrician had said more than once when the mother expressed her fears.
"They have to make it up, and you can almost see the effort. All of them worked before, and all of them stopped."
"Artistic talent, Roberta Sokolov thought, was like the soul; in the absence of an actual product, you couldn’t prove its existence."
"It was perfectly okay to be a stay-at-home mom (though she loathed that expression) with a real political consciousness that extended beyond the act of packing organic sunflower cookies and pesticide-free-juice boxes into her children’s lunch bags."
"She wanted her children to feel comfortable among nonwhite people and in an environment where money did not flow."
"But mostly she wanted to be reassured that she herself had not closed up and changed and lost the vigor of her own political drive—along with her art."
"The field of whiteness bothered her tremendously."
"Life with a baby was as primitive and powerful as life with a lover."
"The presence of the puppets had diminished for him, but still he stayed with them."
"You could never really tell where one body ended and another began; the lines were drawn as crudely as if they had been rendered by a child."
"They felt secure in their nest, with René at the easel and Georgette reclining or standing."
"I can just see you in the mud, Norm, with your blouse off and a string of flowers in your hair."
"As a rule, the twins did not take frustration well."
"Karen dutifully envisioned the men dancing around a campfire, getting themselves all worked up, beating the skins of drums."
"The entire Yip family was literal, focused, concerned mostly with the quantifiable."
"Karen’s water had broken one morning when she was shopping at Camarata & Bello."
"Cars like this, Karen had thought at the time, were for large American families with children who sprawled out playing with Game Boys and decks of Uno."
"The SUV, in Chu Hua’s eyes, was a golden coach."
"Work made my hands look like cut-up pieces of gingerroot."
"But there was some sensation then too, and Karen looked downward with dread."
"Theoretically I do, said Roberta. It’s not like it usually comes up."
"In excellence shall I find my home, In honesty shall I seek my guide, In innocence shall I place my trust, In knowledge shall I reach my stride."
"Wilson reached down and scooped both sons up briefly, swinging them in the air."
"I hear a sound, said Rhoda, cheep, chirp; cheep, chirp; going up and down."
"Karen was often made breathless by her mother’s insults to Wilson, but he just received them indifferently."
"Karen’s mother started to cry when she picked up a particularly ornate silver dish, saying, 'This pretty as anything.'"
"I’m sure they’ll be glad to have them," Roberta Sokolov said.
"How, Karen wondered, did Wilson even know the lyrics to this song?"
"Work made my hands look like cut-up pieces of gingerroot," Chu Hua said.
"They would learn how to give a speech and how to look an adult in the eye during a conversation."
"Karen’s parents, still seemingly tired from having worked for so long in a restaurant kitchen."
"You cannot sit and dream for your whole life. You cannot memorize pi."
"How white his scalp was beneath that dark mass, Amy thought each time the woman lifted his hair. The whiteness of the scalp was like the whiteness of bones, revealing the self in a way that was always ghoulish when it was displayed."
"It’s like the life force: knowing that someone wants you and that you want him and that you’ve created a secret world together."
"Work changed everything. For me, work is anti-death."
"We were the early ones. I know we got some things wrong, but we did try to do right by everyone."
"Work is play, or at least all good work is play. All work that is pleasurable feels pleasurable in the same way that play once did."
"Where is my reward? Roberta thought churlishly, almost in tears. Where is it, when is it my turn?"
"A painting studio? I am not an artist anymore, Nathaniel."
"Well, art isn’t always about survival," said Nathaniel.
"You’re so hard on yourself," he said, touching the edges of her hair.
"I don’t think living somewhere more interesting and diverse will inspire me," she whispered.
"I often feel, lately, that we’ve lost control of everything in this country," Nathaniel said.
"We’re all falling, Roberta had thought, and we’re all afraid."
"If only being young traveled such a circular route."
"All right, sure, it’s a lot of things, I guess. It happens all the time, and it’s as common as anything."