...our familiar features rinsed in weird adulthood.

— Jennifer Egan

Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words--"friend" and "real" and "story" and "change"--words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some, like "identity" and "search" and "cloud," had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had "American" become an ironic term? How had "democracy" come to be used in an arch, mocking way?

— Jennifer Egan

Rich children are always blond, Jocelyn goes. It has to do with vitamins.

— Jennifer Egan

Sasha's green eyes were right up against yours, the lashes interlocking. "In Naples," she said, "there were kids who were just lost. You knew they were never going to get back to what they'd been, or have a normal life. And then there were other ones who you thought, maybe they will."... You opened your eyes, which you hadn't realized were shut again. "What I'm saying is, We're the survivors," Sasha said...." Not everyone is. But we are. Okay?

— Jennifer Egan

See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. "It's mine.

— Jennifer Egan

She'd risked everything, and here was the result: the raw, warped core of her life.

— Jennifer Egan

She was clean": no piercings, tattoos, or scarification. All the kids were now. And who could blame them, Alex thought, after watching three generations of flaccid tattoos droop like moth-eaten upholstery over poorly stuffed biceps and saggy asses?

— Jennifer Egan

Soiled, forgotten coats of arms were carved above their massive doorways, and these unsettled Ted: such universal, defining symbols made meaningless by nothing more than time.

— Jennifer Egan

So this is it ⎯ what cost me all that time. A man who turned out to be old, a house that turned out to be empty.

— Jennifer Egan

Sure, everything is ending," Jules said, "but not yet.

— Jennifer Egan