He sleeps, you grade student essays so terrible you don‘t know where to begin; you stop yourself from scribbling THIS SUCKS in bright red Sharpie across a title page you sign with a smiley face: Sincerely, Yr Instructor.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor and another fig was Ee Gee the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe [...

If an object is relegated to dailiness it becomes a part of you. It is ingested by habit. It is stored between the studs of the walls of your self.

If I were going to shill for any book I've read so far this year, this would be the one. Luminous, poetic prose vividly reimagining the inner life of one of history's most fascinating women, Margaret Cavendish. Absolutely gorgeous.

"This is one of the most painful things about getting older, especially getting older in the same place you were young: the constant realizations that you could have been doing everything better all along, if only you'd known how to read the map more accurately."