1
Jenny Marzen is who again?" Amy knew perfectly well who she was. Jenny Marzen was hot, hotter than Amy had ever been, and Jenny Marzen would be washed up in ten years and didn't know it. "And Jenny is my number one fan?"" No, but she likes you. She read your stories in grad school."" What is she, twelve?"" The point is, she really liked the article, and all that stuff about experience and news. Lex says she says you've got gravitas."" That's a dirty lie. I never even had mono.Jincy Willett
2
People who wrote novels about universities hardly ever got them right. Max had spent his short working life untenured, but still he'd managed to be a charming magnet wherever he taught, and Amy had surfeited on faculty gossip and professorial antics and the general behavior of academics, who were as a whole no more brilliant or Machiavellian than travel agents. They tended toward shabbier clothes and manners, and of course there was the occasional storied eccentric or truly original mind, but most college campuses – especially the older ones – functioned less as brain trusts than as wildlife preserves, housing and protecting people who wouldn't last a week in GenPop.Jincy Willett
3
When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help! " was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus, " said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not, " she said. .Jincy Willett