Standard Deviation Quotes
"You should set a timer. Then you won’t forget about it."
"There’s a limit to how much any one person can hear about United Nations Day and I’m there."
"It’s like there’s a limit to how much any one person can hear about United Nations Day and I’m there."
"Just set a timer. Then you won’t forget about it."
"That’s easy. Just buy frozen meatballs from the supermarket and we’ll stick toothpicks with little Swedish flags in them and no one will ever know any different."
"It’s like I’ve turned. Like I’ve become someone else."
"I don’t know how you’re, like, still a functioning member of society."
"I feel like I was never the same afterward, like some vital part of my brain was destroyed."
"Life without pasta or pizza? Who could live like that?"
"There's only so much mineral water you can drink."
"I feel obligated because he's helped Matthew so much."
"The thought of Matthew’s babyhood made Graham’s mouth feel sour with the heavy saliva left over from so much coffee drinking."
"It wrung Graham’s heart just to think about."
"Children were many things—heartbreaking and wonderful and worrisome—but Graham had never thought they were nice, exactly."
"Graham’s mind stepped around that thought the same way his body stepped around a puddle of vomit on the sidewalk."
"Sorrow swept through him like cold water through a faucet."
"Camp was fantastic, which meant life was fantastic."
"Life forced you to cope. Life wore down all your sharp corners with its tedious grinding on."
"What Graham had to do was to love Matthew right now, right this instant—heart, get busy—before Matthew grew up and turned into someone else."
"It didn’t really relieve the stress, it just sort of diluted it."
"There should be a houseguests’ club, where your houseguest could watch movies and play games and have a snack while you recharged your batteries."
"‘How big is your stomach?’ Audra asked in the sort of sincere but idle way she might wonder aloud how long a hummingbird’s life span was."
"Life was just a long stretch of people breaking up with you, really."
"Love would still be out there, roaming all over the place."
"But when you looked back, you really only remembered the breakups, and it seemed unfair to have to live through all those breakups and then have to relive it—a hundred times more painfully—through your child."
"Life is unfair. People say that all the time, but they’re usually talking about some sort of capital-gains tax."
"You could call her up one day and she’d be so happy to hear from you, and the next day, she’d be all ‘What? What? I can’t hear you! Speak up!’ even when the connection was totally clear."
"‘I hope Elspeth was at least fingered by a drunk migrant worker,’ she said."
"The fact of Elspeth’s death was like that little jolt, surprising him from time to time."
"But that was why the weekend had no rhythm, Graham realized. He was treating sorrow as a formality, or a temporary condition—like a room he was passing through and shortly he’d enter another room where some other, happier emotion was going on."
"Even on this day, the day they buried Elspeth, Graham had to listen while Audra talked to strangers about tuna breath."
"‘I might not see you again before you leave,’ Graham said. ‘So let me say goodbye now.’"
"The status of the guest is directly proportional to the freshness of the snack food offered by the host."
"‘Well, okay, but even if we did do something for the unloved people we know,’ Audra said, ‘it wouldn’t solve the problem. Love would still be out there, roaming all over the place.’"
"But sooner or later someone would break up with Mick, too."
"I don’t believe married couples should spend too much time apart."
"It’s like being the proprietor of a general store, but without the pesky customers."
"You kept pushing until you broke on through to the other side."
"It was like a reverse paparazzi flash—and, just for a moment, it seemed to him to contain all the future joy and sorrow in the world, in equal amounts."
"Say what you will about fat and sugar and salt and alcohol—it’s all true. But the meal really did—in a way, for a moment, under the circumstances—make them all a little bit happier, even Graham."
"This sort of trust is one of the great paradoxes of parenting."
"He wondered what other people thought of them."
"He and Audra must look like the newest of lovers, or the frailest of seniors, or the drunkest of partygoers—or anything, really, other than the survivors they were."
"Graham didn’t hold out much hope. Rebound relationships never worked."
"Spaghetti marinara was like taking a girl on a first date, actually: nothing fancy, no surprises, best foot forward."
"It was like being the proprietor of a general store, but without the pesky customers."