The Guest Quotes
"Why did being in the ocean make you feel like such a good human?"
"The city. She was not in the city, and thank god for that."
"All the women in the show hated each other, hated each other so much, just so they could avoid hating their husbands."
"People could tell when you needed things, had an animal nose for failure."
"And it was good to be someone else. To believe, even for a half moment, that the story was different."
"The perfect sheets, the chilly rooms: they were stupid things, taken one by one, but all together they were a convincing substitute for a life."
"Occasionally she believed that she and Simon were actually in something like love."
"You could get used to anything, was the point."
"It was better, sometimes, to never know certain things existed."
"Our art needs more technology and our technology needs more art."
"The truth was that the world they were imagining would never include them."
"You could perform a constant filtering of whatever you were feeling, taking in the facts and shifting them to the side."
"The sun wasn’t directly overhead and Alex could sit on the sand by her bag and try to appear content with her own company, soothed by the sound of the waves..."
"Sometimes it was best to just say yes, to see how far something could go. It would either be a good choice or a bad choice, no way to know yet."
"Any glitch in the usual order of things, the expected social script, made people anxious, off balance."
"A glancing touch at their elbow, the barest squeeze of an arm, could short-circuit any wariness."
"Men did not, it turned out, mind being approached by a young woman—not usually, anyway."
"The room was dark, candles on the bar and on the tables."
"That continuity seemed nearly impossible to Alex: imagine the thread staying the same, the world remaining static."
"Simple, really, but still rare enough that people didn’t get it from their families."
"The power she felt was almost distressing, an awareness of each tick of Jack’s insecurities, his needs."
"Like when she’d first moved to the city, and the men’s humanness had been overwhelming to her, psychically exhausting."
"And anyway, most people didn’t feel the way they were supposed to feel. Love as a sort of catch-all term..."
"I told them I didn’t know where you were. Which was basically true, wasn’t it?"
"The absence of the dog made her looming defection worse."
"Love touched the hearts of the Brahmans’ young daughters when Siddhartha walked through the lanes of the town with the luminous forehead, with the eye of a king, with his slim hips."
"I thought this guy was a friend. Or whatever. He’s really fucked up. I don’t know what to do. I’m scared. Like, really scared."
"It still seemed fake. A game he was playing."
I love you," he said, "I’m dumb. I’m sorry.
"We have to talk, you can’t just leave, it’s not fair."