Quotes From "A Visit From The Goon Squad" By Jennifer Egan

So this is it ⎯ what cost me all that time. A man who turned out to be old, a house that turned out to be empty. Jennifer Egan

Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out. Jennifer Egan

Too Clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was "digitization" which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. "An aesthetic holocaust! Jennifer Egan

And it may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering, as it did at the first Human Be-In and Monterey Pop and Woodstock. Or it may be that two generations of war and surveillance had left people craving the embodiment of their own unease in the form of a lone, unsteady man on a slide guitar. Jennifer Egan

Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, so that when it exploded, it would destroy just herself. Jennifer Egan

Yet each disappointment Ted felt in his wife, each incremental deflation, was accompanied by a seizure of guilt; many years ago, he had taken the passion he felt for Susan and folded it in half, so he no longer had a drowning, helpless feeling when he glimpsed her beside him in bed: her ropy arms and soft, generous ass. Then he’d folded it in half again, so when he felt desire for Susan, it no longer brought with it an edgy terror of never being satisfied. Then in half again, so that feeling desire entailed no immediate need to act. Then in half again, so he hardly felt it. His desire was so small in the end that Ted could slip it inside his desk or a pocket and forget about it, and this gave him a feeling of safety and accomplishment, of having dismantled a perilous apparatus that might have crushed them both. Susan was baffled at first, then distraught; she’d hit him twice across the face; she’d run from the house in a thunderstorm and slept at a motel; she’d wrestled Ted to the bedroom floor in a pair of black crotchless underpants. But eventually a sort of amnesia had overtaken Susan; her rebellion and hurt had melted away, deliquesced into a sweet, eternal sunniness that was terrible in the way that life would be terrible, Ted supposed, without death to give it gravitas and shape. He’d presumed at first that her relentless cheer was mocking, another phase in her rebellion, until it came to him that Susan had forgotten how things were between them before Ted began to fold up his desire; she’d forgotten and was happy – had never not been happy – and while all of this bolstered his awe at the gymnastic adaptability of the human mind, it also made him feel that his wife had been brainwashed. By him. Jennifer Egan

The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL. Jennifer Egan

She was clean": no piercings, tattoos, or scarifications. All the kids were now. And who could blame them, Alex thought, after watching three generations of flaccid tattoos droop like moth-eaten upholstery over poorly stuffed biceps and saggy asses? Jennifer Egan

This is the music business. 'Five years is five hundred years' - your words. Jennifer Egan

He's rigged a tiny cassette player with a small set of foam earphones to listen to demo tapes and rough mixes. Occasionally he'll hand the device to Mindy, wanting her opinion, and each time, the experience of music pouring directly against her eardrums - hers alone - is a shock that makes her eyes well up; the privacy of it, the way it transforms her surroundings into a golden montage, as if she were looking back on this lark in Africa with Lou from some distant future. Jennifer Egan

Das mine! ' protested Ava, Bennie's daughter, affirming Alex's recent theory that language acquisition involved a phase of speaking German. She snatched a plastic skillet away from his own daughter, Cara-Ann, who lurched after it, roaring, 'Mine pot! Mine pot! Jennifer Egan

Sasha's green eyes were right up against yours, the lashes interlocking. "In Naples, " she said, "there were kids who were just lost. You knew they were never going to get back to what they'd been, or have a normal life. And then there were other ones who you thought, maybe they will.".. You opened your eyes, which you hadn't realized were shut again. "what I'm saying is, We're the survivors, " Sasha said.." Not everyone is. But we are. Okay? . Jennifer Egan

You can do it alone. But it's going to be so much harder. Jennifer Egan

Oh we'll know each other for forever' Bix said. 'The days of losing touch are almost gone.' 'What does that mean? ' Drew asks.' We're going to meet again in a different place, ' Bix said. 'Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us. Jennifer Egan

Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words--"friend" and "real" and "story" and "change"--words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some, like "identity" and "search" and "cloud, " had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had "American" become an ironic term? How had "democracy" come to be used in an arch, mocking way? . Jennifer Egan

Kathy was a Republican, one of those people who used the unforgivable phrase "meant to be"--usually when describing her own good fortune or the disasters that had befallen other people. Jennifer Egan

The sky was electric blue above the trees but the yard felt dark. Stephanie went to the edge of the lawn and sat her forehead on her knees. The grass and soil were still warm from the day. She wanted to cry but she couldn't. The feeling was too deep. Jennifer Egan

I’m sorry and I believe in you and I’ll always be near you, protecting you, and I will never leave you, I’ll be curled around your heart for the rest of your life. Jennifer Egan

But Bennie knew that what he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. An aesthetic holocaust! Bennie knew better than to say this stuff aloud. Jennifer Egan

They resumed walking. Alex felt an ache in his eyes and throat. "I don't know what happened to me, " he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't." Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. "You grew up, Alex, " he said, "just like the rest of us. Jennifer Egan

A frenzy of activity that had mostly led him in circles: wasn't that a fairly accurate description of lust? Jennifer Egan

A frenzy of activity that had mostly led him in circles: wasn't that a fairly accurate description of lust? At times Bennie didn't even mind its disappearance; it was sort of a relief not to be constantly wanting to fuck someone. The world was unquestionably a more peaceful place without the half hard-on that had been his constant companion since the age of thirteen, but did Bennie want to live in such a world? . Jennifer Egan

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you. Jennifer Egan

I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all. Jennifer Egan

The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them–listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen. Jennifer Egan

Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out. And I, like a scientist unwittingly inhaling toxic fumes from the beaker I was boiling in my lab, had, through sheer physical proximity, been infected by that same delusion and in my drugged state had come to believe I was Excluded: condemned to stand shivering outside the public library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street forever and.. Jennifer Egan

Happened as I listened: I felt pain. Not in my head, not in my arm, not in my leg; everywhere at once. I told myself there was no difference between being “inside” and being “outside, ” that it all came down to X’s and O’s that could be acquired in any number of different ways, but the pain increased to a point where I thought I might collapse, and I limped away. Jennifer Egan

It's finished. Everything went past, without me. Jennifer Egan

...our familiar features rinsed in weird adulthood. Jennifer Egan

I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real? Jennifer Egan

...underneath that I'd said something else: we were both a couple of asswipes, and now only I'm an asswipe; why? And underneath that, something else: once an asswipe, always an asswipe. Jennifer Egan

When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened? Jennifer Egan

No one is waiting for me. In this story, I’m the girl no one is waiting for. Usually the girl is fat, but my problem is more rare, which is freckles: I look like someone threw handfuls of mud at my face. Jennifer Egan

You said you were a fairy princess You said you were a shooting star You said we'd go to Bora BoraNow look at where the fuck we are Jennifer Egan

See, " Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. "It's mine. Jennifer Egan

She'd risked everything, and here was the result: the raw, warped core of her life. Jennifer Egan

A bit of theory as we settle down for lunch: the waiter's treatment of Kitty is actually a kind of sandwich, with the bottom bread being the bored and slightly effete way he normally acts with customers, the middle being the crazed and abnormal way he feels around this famous nineteen-year-old girl, and the top bread being his attempt to contain and conceal this alien middle layer with some mode of behavior that at least approximates the bottom layer of boredom and effeteness that is his norm. Jennifer Egan