After a certain age, you felt a need not be alone. It grew stronger, like a radio frequency, until finally it was so powerful that you were forced to do something about it.

— Meg Wolitzer

...because when you're young, you don't really believe you'll ever be anything other than young.

— Meg Wolitzer

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

— Meg Wolitzer

But here was where the question of talent became slippery, for who could say whether Spirit-in-the-Woods had ever pulled incipient talent out of a kid and activated it, or whether the talent had been there all along and would have come out even without this place.

— Meg Wolitzer

But, she knew, you didn’t have to marry your soulmate, and you didn’t even have to marry an Interesting. You didn’t always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.

— Meg Wolitzer

But this post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it; art was still central, but now everyone had to think about making a living too, and they did so with a kind of scorn for money except as it allowed them to live the way they wanted to live.

— Meg Wolitzer

Dennis was present, still present, and this, she thought as she stayed landed against him, was no small talent.

— Meg Wolitzer

For while, they'd stayed close during the absurd years of his sharp rise, having children had knocked it all into a different arrangement. The minute you had children you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defensively, and everyone who was outside the walls--even if you'd once been best friends--was now just that, outsiders. Families had their ways. You took note of how other people raised their kids, even other people you loved, and it seemed all wrong. The culture and practices of one's own family were the only way, for better or worse. Who could say why a family decided to have a certain style, to tell the jokes it did, to put up its particular refrigerator magnets?

— Meg Wolitzer

I always thought talent was everything, but maybe it was always money. Or even class. Or if not class exactly, connections.

— Meg Wolitzer

If someone said 'diametrically,' could 'opposed' be far behind?

— Meg Wolitzer