“ If something was worth writing down, it was worth writing down in full. And she had a horror of lists--grocery lists, Christmas card lists, and most grisly of all, to-do lists. Lists, like appointment… Jincy Willett
“ Once, before leaving on vacation, I copied an entire page from an Alice Munro story and left it in my typewriter, hoping a burglar might come upon it and mistake her words for my own. That an intruder… Jincy Willett
“ Too bad for the storytellers. Too bad for the sense makers, the apologists, that nothing, then or ever, nothing was inevitable. It's just too bad. Jincy Willett
“ I thought, you see, that there must be some connection between money and memorable experience; between rare wine and rare intelligence. In short, I was a romantic idiot. Jincy Willett
“ 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 su… Jincy Willett
“ 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… Jincy Willett
“ Carla was wearing a No Fear sweatshirt. You are too old, Amy wanted to tell her, for legible clothing. Jincy Willett
“ 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.… Jincy Willett
“ According to Hannah, real life just happens, whereas stories make sense. When you put real life in print, she says, you show it up for the pointless mess it really is. Jincy Willett
“ Actually, the Sniper's sense of humor frightened Amy more than anything else. The parody of Carla's poem had been witty, the rudeness of Marvy's critique outlandish, and she was still, for some reason… Jincy Willett
“ Reading was not an escape for her, any more than it is for me. It was an aspect of direct experience. She distinguished, of course, between the fictional world and the real one, in which she had to pr… Jincy Willett
“ (T)here are worse things than falling on your face right out of college...Like instant, unearned success. Like getting your first novel accepted by the first publisher you send it to. Like getting you… Jincy Willett
“ (D)ialogue is generally the worst choice for exposition. 'When you're writing lines...you need to focus on the way people actually talk. And when we talk to each other we never actually explain our te… Jincy Willett
