Purity: A Novel

Weak people hold grudges, Mom. Strong people forgive

the beauty of the second glance

The dog swished its bushy and cumbersome tail.

Dogs again had it right. They didn’t trouble themselves with mysteries that could never be solved anyway.

It was a temporary sadness, the more beautiful for being sad, the more precious for being temporary.

It’s like having one red sock in a load of white laundry. One red sock, and nothing is ever white again.”

sitting in overlit conference rooms identical in every respect but the languages on the mineral-water bottles from which unreconciled antagonists were pouring

A midge in a watering eye

It’s your duty as a consumer to want them.”

my mother could fight through it, so might I.