Marriage plot Quotes

“It was always embarrassing when professors assigned their own books. Even Madeleine, who found all the reading hard going, could tell that Zipperstein’s contribution to the field was reformulative and second-tier.”

“In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.”

“College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.”

“Given the choice, a yeast cell's ideal state is to be diploid. But if it's in an environment with a lack of nutrients, you know what happens?The diploids break into haploids again. Solitary little haploids. Because, in a crisis, it's easier to survive as a single cell.”

“The lover`s discourse was of an extreme solitude. The solitude was extreme because it wasn`t physical. It was extreme because you felt it while in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, the most solitary of places.”

“The more she thought about it, the more Madeleine understood that extreme solitude didn't just describe the way she was feeling about Leonard. It explained how she'd always felt when she was in love. It explained what love was like and, just maybe, what was wrong with it.”

“As they were walking, a beggar came up, holding his hand out and crying, "Baksheesh! Baksheesh!"Mike kept on going but Mitchell stopped. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out twenty paise and placed it in the beggar's dirty hand.Mike said, "I used to give to beggars when I first came here. But then I realized, it's hopeless. It never stops.""Jesus said you should give to whoever asks you," Mitchell said."Yeah, well," Mike said, "obviously Jesus was never in Calcutta.”

“He felt as if he were being violently emptied out, as if a big magnet were pulling his blood and fluids down into the earth. He was weeping again, unstoppably, his head like the chandelier in his grandparents’ house in Buffalo, the one that was too high for them to reach and that every time he visited had one fewer bulb alight. His head was an old chandelier, going dark.”

“He had the feeling that there was something physically behind his eyes, blocking the light.”