One thing we knew for certain-despite all our certainties, it was very difficult to guess what one individual was thinking at any given moment.

— Joshua Ferris

People have all this resentment against their parents for fucking them up, but they never realize, the minute they have a kid, that they cease being the child so fondly victimized in their hearts and start being the benighted perpetrators of unfathomable pain.

— Joshua Ferris

She no longer lived in a world of speculation or recall and would take nothing on faith when the facts were but a few clicks away. It drove me nuts. I was sick to death of having as my dinner companions Wikipedia, About.com, IMDb, the Height guide, Time out New York, a hundred Tumbles, the New York Times, and People Magazine. Was there not some strange forgotten pleasure in reveling in our ignorance? Would we just be wrong?

— Joshua Ferris

Some people would never forget certain people, a few people would remember everyone, and most of us would mostly be forgotten.

— Joshua Ferris

The funny thing about work itself, it was so bearable. The dreariest task was perfectly bearable. It presented challenges to overcome, the distraction provided by a sense of urgency, and the things made work utterly, even harmoniously bearable.

— Joshua Ferris

They were like two inviolable spheres touching at a fine point in their curves, touching but failing to penetrate, failing to breathe the other's air.

— Joshua Ferris

We all knew there was a good deal of pointlessness to nearly all the meetings and in fact one meeting out of every three or four was nearly perfectly without gain or purpose, but many meetings revealed the one thing that was necessary, and so we attended them and afterward we thanked each other.

— Joshua Ferris

We had these sudden revelations that employment, the daily nine-to-five, was driving us far from our better selves.

— Joshua Ferris

We had visceral, rich memories of dull, interminable hours. Then a day would pass in perfect harmony with our projects, our family members, and our coworkers, and we couldn’t believe we were getting paid for this.

— Joshua Ferris

What separated the living from one another could be as impenetrable as whatever barrier separated the living from the dead.

— Joshua Ferris