263 Quotes by Meg Wolitzer

Every marriage is just two people striking a bargain,” he went on in a softer tone. “I traded, you traded. So maybe it wasn’t even.

I think that’s what the people who change our lives always do. They give us permission to be the person we secretly really long to be but maybe don’t feel we’re allowed to be.

The mind plays tricks on itself in order to stay in one piece.

Though Jonah felt transfixed inside his own childhood, no one else saw him as a child. He was already over the hump of middle age, heading rapidly toward those year that no one like to speak of. The best parts had already passed for people Jonah’s age. By now you were meant to have become what you would finally be, and to gracefully and unobtrusively stay in that state for the rest of your life.

Sometimes it’s easier to tell ourselves a story.

Our relationship was like one of those YouTube videos of a flower frowning in speeded-up motion. All of the sudden we were in love.

There are some people who have such a strong effect on you, even if you’ve spent very little time with them, that they become embossed inside you, and any hint of them, any casual mention, creates a sudden stir in you.

It wasn’t easy to understand how the love between two other people could diminish you. If those two people were still accessible to you, if they called you all the time, if they asked you to come into the city for the weekend as you’d always done, then why should you feel, suddenly, intensely lonely?

Greer had noticed, when she was very young, how, looking straight ahead, you could sort of always see the side of your own nose. Once she realized this it began to trouble her. Nothing was wrong with her nose, but she knew it would always be part of her view of the world. Greer had understood it was hard to escape yourself, and to escape the way it felt being you.