olivieri-highlights/data/kindle/Kindle.Highlights_Fleishman.Is.in.Trouble.A.Novel_1663759195541.json

Initial attempt to create a package that returns quotations selected specifically by me

{"asin":"B07H71LX88","title":"Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel","authors":"Taffy Brodesser-Akner","highlights":[{"text":"Women who would fuck you like they owed you money, was how our friend Seth put it.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=55","value":55},"note":"Oof"},{"text":"find that his phone was aglow from sunup to sundown (in the night the glow was extra bright) with texts that contained G-string and ass cleavage and underboob and sideboob and just straight-up boob","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=56","value":56},"note":null},{"text":"He understood divorce in a macro way, of course. But he had not yet adjusted to it in a micro way, in the other-side-of-the-bed-being-empty way, in the nobody-to-tell-you-were-running-late way, in the you-belong-to-no-one way.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=64","value":64},"note":null},{"text":"He only said her name at the end of sentences now, Rachel.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=103","value":103},"note":null},{"text":"Toby had been told all his life that being in love means never having to say you’re sorry. But no, it was actually being divorced that meant never having to say you’re sorry.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=114","value":114},"note":null},{"text":"She wore a tank top that said SPIRITUAL GANGSTER. Toby","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=181","value":181},"note":null},{"text":"He had spent so many years in the service of trying to relocate that Rachel within the Rachel that she kept proving herself to be. But even now, it was that version of Rachel that was the first that ever came to mind when he thought of her. He felt he would be doing worlds better if it weren’t.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=283","value":283},"note":null},{"text":"It wasn’t how they so clearly believed it would always be like this, or perhaps how they knew it wouldn’t and so decided to enjoy it; that would be worse, if they were enjoying their youth because they knew it wouldn’t last, because who had the sense to do that?","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=407","value":407},"note":"Hopefully I do"},{"text":"anyone who didn’t yet truly understand consequences, how the world would have its way with you despite all your careful life planning. There was no way to learn that until you lived it. There was no way for any of us to learn that until we lived it.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=409","value":409},"note":null},{"text":"(where were her hands?) was alluring—that only giddy, half-dead submission could turn a man on. And maybe it was true for some—maybe it was true for the young men whose first primary sexual relationships were with porn—but not for him.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=429","value":429},"note":null},{"text":"We didn’t know yet that there were variations on insecurity; we thought we were all maximally insecure, and, sure, those insecurities took different shapes, but we were all suffering.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=450","value":450},"note":null},{"text":"Most of all, we didn’t know how severe the damage had been to him for being someone who had desires and wanted to be desired back and hadn’t been.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=455","value":455},"note":null},{"text":"Toby had been in college for two years by then, long enough to learn that high school had not been an anomaly.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=468","value":468},"note":null},{"text":"Toby and I kept talking, watching Seth seduce the waitress, commenting on it like we were sports broadcasters. Within five words of each other, I knew we understood each other. Our defenses were the same: sarcasm, pettiness, a protective well-readness that we hoped conveyed that we were smarter than everyone. I liked him. I could have even like-liked him.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=480","value":480},"note":null},{"text":"I began to stand and then so did he, but when he stopped standing, I kept going, one inch, two inches, three inches.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=483","value":483},"note":null},{"text":"Toby wasn’t heartbroken; he didn’t want me, either, except that we both wanted somebody.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=491","value":491},"note":null},{"text":"Seth’s shoulder was higher than mine when we sat and so my new lean had more dignity.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=509","value":509},"note":null},{"text":"it was like I discovered the cure for myself.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=515","value":515},"note":null},{"text":"confined me to semantic house arrest,","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=549","value":549},"note":null},{"text":"(There were no dads’ nights out for my husband, because the supposition was that the men got to live life all the time, whereas we were caged animals who were sometimes allowed to prowl our local town bar and drink the blood of the free people.)","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=567","value":567},"note":null},{"text":"I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=573","value":573},"note":null},{"text":"I made my face placid and curious, the way I did during my old magazine interviews, pretending the stakes were just regular when really everything hung on the answers.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=589","value":589},"note":null},{"text":"You don’t have to leave your house to be humiliated. You don’t even have to be humiliated. It’s totally opt-in. Everyone who is there is there to participate.”","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=593","value":593},"note":null},{"text":"that way he had of releasing the valve of his anger slowly, tensely, beautifully so that his vortex of empathy, when sent through the prism of the anger, created a generalized disgust for the state of the world that seemed like the only conclusion a smart, thinking person could come to.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=609","value":609},"note":null},{"text":"By the time we make this decision, to hook ourselves to a person for the rest of our lives, we’re what? Twenty-five? Thirty? We’re babies. We don’t even know what we’re dealing with. How could we fathom what it would be like to be on our best behavior for that long?","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=639","value":639},"note":null},{"text":"How will we know what we need? Your tastes in TV haven’t even changed yet.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=642","value":642},"note":null},{"text":"Marriage starts out full of white discs. Even when there are a few black ones on the board, it’s still a white board. You get into a fight? Ultimately fine and something to laugh at in the end, because the Othello board is still white. But when it finally happens and the black discs take over—the affair, the financial impropriety, the boredom, the midlife crisis, whatever it is that ends the marriage—the board becomes black. Now you look at the marriage, even the things that were formerly characterized as good memories, as tainted and rotted from the start: That adorable argument on the honeymoon was actually foreshadowing; the battle over what to name Hannah was my way of denying her the little family she had. Even the purely good memories are now haunted by a sense that I was a fool to allow myself to think that life was good and that a kingdom of happiness was mine.” (I told him I understood his metaphor, but also that’s not how you play Othello.)","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=650","value":650},"note":"Learned about this in psych"},{"text":"But the liver was unique in the way that it healed. It was full of forgiveness. It understood that you needed a few chances before you got your life right. And it wouldn’t just forgive you; it would practically forget. It would allow you to start over in a way that he could not imagine was true in any other avenue of life.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=751","value":751},"note":null},{"text":"Neighbors were how you voted for a child’s future.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=913","value":913},"note":null},{"text":"“Are you going to get married again?” “I don’t think so,” he said. “Once might have been enough for me.”","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=923","value":923},"note":null},{"text":"Dorrian’s was Tess’s idea. Something felt distinctly noir about this, a woman in a wrap dress and mega-cleavage at a bar, dyed blond hair in a twist, him walking in to find her there already with a drink—a martini with six olives—tonguing the cocktail straw, which was a new choice for a martini but he tried not to judge.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=948","value":948},"note":"Aestheicize"},{"text":"Now she looked at Toby. “You couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to be owned by someone.” Toby took a long swallow of his Scotch.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=978","value":978},"note":null},{"text":"He didn’t remember the telling of stories, but maybe that was because back when he was young, nobody had stories yet; everything interesting was happening right then, not in the past.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1001","value":1001},"note":null},{"text":"He wondered if there was a version of this story in which he was the villain.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1005","value":1005},"note":null},{"text":"thought that the sacrifice gave you one up on your spouse, but it didn’t. It only made the spouse feel more entitled to take. Trust me, Tess’s husband was somewhere right now, one woman sitting on his face while another sucked him off, and he was certainly not talking about the ways Tess let him down.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1011","value":1011},"note":null},{"text":"It was the strange feeling of taking ice skates off after wearing them for hours and walking on plain ground—you know how to do it but it’s different. Just wow.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1029","value":1029},"note":null},{"text":"“Assume you will get the best and you will get the best,”","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1074","value":1074},"note":"Oh my god"},{"text":"There were women who had no pubic hair but did have armpit hair. There were women who said unspeakably filthy things right to his face. There were women who cried after sex. There were women who wanted to be pinched or hit or spanked or slapped, which made him very uncomfortable. There were women who wanted him on the top, on the bottom, on all fours. They wanted him to go faster and slower with his mouth on their crotches. They wanted to know if he wanted to be spanked. (“No, thank you,” he said.) They wanted to know if he was gonna come hard. (“I’m coming! I’m coming!” he yelled.) They wanted him to come to Mommy. They wanted to call him Daddy. Each of these nights, he fell further in love.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1088","value":1088},"note":null},{"text":"There may have actually been a time when he looked at the Seths of the world with pity for the happiness that he had that they didn’t even seem to know to want.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1119","value":1119},"note":"Chi Ro"},{"text":"The sex existed outside any interpersonal tension, the way it always had.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1175","value":1175},"note":null},{"text":"then flipped over so that she was flat on her stomach and he lay on top of her.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1176","value":1176},"note":null},{"text":"","isNoteOnly":true,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1177","value":1177},"note":"Not just us"},{"text":"He could have told you that Lexi Leffer’s soul was made of plastic.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1250","value":1250},"note":null},{"text":"Elevators had never bothered him before, but lately, his faith in systems was wobbly.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1266","value":1266},"note":null},{"text":"There was no way to avoid youth.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1481","value":1481},"note":"Oof"},{"text":"It did not occur to me how I would have to spend my life explaining my darkness and dissatisfaction to someone who didn’t even understand the concept of it.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1637","value":1637},"note":"Tristan"},{"text":"It had been a long time since they’d had intimacy in love. In recent years, only their hatred had true intimacy, meaning that when they fought, they were able to say the most specifically cruel things they’d mined from years of experience with each other. He trod hard on her extraordinary maternal inconsistency; she went for his masculinity like it was an artery. But when they weren’t fighting, the intimacy was gone. Their conversations were so cold and distant that if you’d overheard them in a restaurant on one of their forced date nights, you would have wondered if they’d known each other for more than a few weeks.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1706","value":1706},"note":null},{"text":"He didn’t want to think about possibility anymore. Possibility was a trap.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1794","value":1794},"note":null},{"text":"Do you see why he didn’t want to talk about the block universe anymore? Because somewhere, in one of them, he was still a hopeless idiot who didn’t see this all coming.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1890","value":1890},"note":null},{"text":"Did he sound angry? He wasn’t angry. He was just explaining things.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1925","value":1925},"note":null},{"text":"You have to take the stuff because it’s the only thing that will comfort you when you realize that everything else is gone. But Toby couldn’t bring himself to fight. It was all too humiliating to beg for things he never wanted in the first place. Getting used to things and enjoying things wasn’t the same as wanting things. Was it?","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=1928","value":1928},"note":null},{"text":"that was the only time Toby ever felt like she was on his side: when she was working as hard as he was to make their misery seem normal.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2383","value":2383},"note":null},{"text":"When finally his last breath was drawn, his wife put her forehead to his and said, “Goodbye, my love,” and Toby had felt then that despite his early death, Martin Loo was a lucky man. So was Toby. Right then, he couldn’t help but think what a privilege all of this was: to know these people, to try with them.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2462","value":2462},"note":null},{"text":"At work, he was able to sit with his patients, knowing that this was not a stepping-stone for his life but life itself.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2527","value":2527},"note":null},{"text":"That was what she never understood: that ambition didn’t always run uphill. Sometimes, when you were happy, it jogged in place.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2528","value":2528},"note":null},{"text":"In this desert of opportunity, getting laid at least a little became his primary directive in the relationship, never asking himself if this was all there was to companionship, or if he even liked her. That was a dangerous question, and besides, he was in no position to ask it; he had to direct all his energy toward interpretation of whether a sloppily slung arm over the shoulder or a kiss directly on the mouth was a green light.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2644","value":2644},"note":null},{"text":"He had a fantasy about meeting a girl, but not a medical student. He would be studying somewhere, and she would be reading a book—maybe a Roth or Bellow book, maybe Virginia Woolf—and he would walk over to her and make a joke and she would laugh and that would be that.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2654","value":2654},"note":null},{"text":"Or because she always wondered what was a little better than the thing she had, which was valuable in business but not really in any other part of your life.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2716","value":2716},"note":null},{"text":"yes, it had only been twenty-four hours, but it was as good on the inside as it had ever looked from the outside.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2736","value":2736},"note":null},{"text":"with the outstanding strength of the dollar rented a full house and hired caterers for every meal.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2775","value":2775},"note":null},{"text":"All his life, he had worried when he should have just trusted that there was a plan for everyone. But the not trusting is part of the plan, too.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2775","value":2775},"note":"Woah"},{"text":"even that accident with the Volvo created a set of circumstances, even all those years later, that allowed him to be exactly where he was when he met Rachel, and when Rachel, against all odds, fell back in love with him.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2795","value":2795},"note":"Teleology"},{"text":"She knew that a man’s desire for a particular woman never truly disappeared if the man didn’t get to have the woman; it became a point of contention for the man’s ego in addition to the desire itself.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2885","value":2885},"note":null},{"text":"Like every other woman in the world who has ever been told to calm down, Rachel had no idea how to behave.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=2902","value":2902},"note":null},{"text":"Could a place have a soul? Could a woman who was alive be a ghost?","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3238","value":3238},"note":null},{"text":"It was awfully sexy. The picture could easily be one of the supplementary pics from a Hr profile, not the main one but a third or fourth. He had to look away from the phone in order to restore her to personhood and patienthood, and only briefly did he think to wonder if he was doing a bad job of thinking of the women he dated as people.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3272","value":3272},"note":null},{"text":"How does a ceiling get a stain?","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3338","value":3338},"note":null},{"text":"What could she be telling him about Toby? Surely not: “I changed the terms of who I was and what I wanted with just about no warning.” Instead it was: “He was lazy and punished me for having ambition.”","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3404","value":3404},"note":"Want to see this developed"},{"text":"Every family was just like mine: chubby, domineering mother; clueless, servile dad; disgusted child; happy-go-lucky child who just wants to know if the slide is open; sometimes there was a third child if the chubby, domineering mother and the clueless, servile dad had started early enough.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3440","value":3440},"note":"Criticism of marriage as a hole"},{"text":"I didn’t like being this way now with someone who still remembered me back at the beginning, back when I was all potential and kinetic energy. Everyone else here knew me as a carpool partner and a walking playdate calendar. By those metrics, I was a star. By Toby’s, I was nothing.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3451","value":3451},"note":null},{"text":"Even high, that was all they talked about. There was no other layer. There was no yearning. There was nothing beyond it.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3476","value":3476},"note":null},{"text":"most disparate thing about Adam and me, it was that he loved them and I did not. I liked order and routine. Weekends were an abyss that was exactly long enough to stare back at me.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3506","value":3506},"note":null},{"text":"Even back then, our conversations were only ever about him and his insecurities. I always felt privileged for being told them, and I felt the role I played was someone who he recognized was equally lost. But now I was considering that maybe I was just a warm body.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3531","value":3531},"note":null},{"text":"He nodded in what could be perceived as thoughtful agreement, but he truly didn’t understand. Wasn’t friendship the thing they never had? Wouldn’t friendship have made all the fighting bearable? She was not his friend.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3559","value":3559},"note":null},{"text":"He wanted to see animosity and regret the way he wanted a glass of water.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3580","value":3580},"note":null},{"text":"initial foray into a younger age range was that women in their twenties were tedious, too. They weren’t tedious to other people in their twenties. They were fine. Maybe people in their fifties thought people in their forties were tedious? He’d find out in ten years.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3611","value":3611},"note":null},{"text":"It was an obsession with sex and a wholesale contempt for what he saw as the condition of the sex, or its barrier, or its delivery device: the actual women.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3702","value":3702},"note":null},{"text":"He wrote about them the way he’d written about Vietnam—ugly, romantic, poignant, unwinnable.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3703","value":3703},"note":null},{"text":"The men hadn’t had any external troubles. They didn’t have a fear that they didn’t belong. They hadn’t had any obstacles. They were born knowing they belonged, and they were reassured at every turn just in case they’d forgotten. But they were still creative and still people, and so they reached for problems out of an artistic sense of yearning. Their problems weren’t real. They had no identity struggle, no illness, no money fears. Instead, they had found the true stuff of their souls—of all our souls—the wound lying beneath all the survivalism and circumstance.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3709","value":3709},"note":"Wow"},{"text":"I imposed my narrative onto theirs, like in one of those biology textbooks where you can place the musculature picture over the bone picture of the human body. I wrote about my problems through them. That was what I knew for sure, that this was the only way to get someone to listen to a woman—to tell her story through a man; Trojan horse yourself into a man, and people would give a shit about you. So I wrote heartfelt stories about their lives, extrapolating from what they gave me and running with what I already knew from being human.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3716","value":3716},"note":"And thats the book"},{"text":"all humans are essentially the same, but only some of us, the men, were truly allowed to be that without apology.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3721","value":3721},"note":"White men in particular"},{"text":"My voice only came alive when I was talking about someone else; my ability to see the truth and to extrapolate human emotion based on what I saw and was told didn’t extend to myself.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3741","value":3741},"note":null},{"text":"“No, it’s where I come to see the women I’m intent on picking up.” Maybe not as smooth as it could have been, but consider his week.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3757","value":3757},"note":null},{"text":"to live as if your life is already in progress.”","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3776","value":3776},"note":null},{"text":"casual boredom about their beauty—that","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3785","value":3785},"note":null},{"text":"when the hell would the growth spurt come, he was promised there would be a growth spurt.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=3789","value":3789},"note":null},{"text":"You didn’t tell them about your asterisks, how you were secretly and privately better than the world you participated in, despite all outward appearances.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4007","value":4007},"note":null},{"text":"Because what is the metric of handling something? Not killing yourself?","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4107","value":4107},"note":"Glad that somone said this."},{"text":"But being an unmarried man at a certain age, it’s like there’s no place for you in the world. The world needs you to have a family, or you’re always someone’s bachelor friend who he can use for a good time, but who has nothing substantial himself.” Toby was shocked, maybe unfairly but still, that Seth had such a depth of understanding of his place in the world.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4183","value":4183},"note":null},{"text":"He’d pretended he was having so much fun that he allowed himself to function as other people’s ids, their good times, the guy they went out with when their conventional, totally satisfying lives hit a snag. Toby had never not wanted his charisma, his height, his looks, but now he saw it: Seth didn’t have anything else. He didn’t have any friends. He didn’t have anyone close to him.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4234","value":4234},"note":null},{"text":"“She was really unhappy,” Amy said. “She had been unhappy for such a long time, but the kids, blah blah blah, you know how it is.” “I do.” “She was going to leave David.” Toby shook his head. “What?” “He cheats on her. He doesn’t give her access to the money. He gives her an allowance. Can you imagine? She gets to raise the kids and keep the house nice and entertain his asshole friends on poker night. She was a lawyer.”","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4364","value":4364},"note":null},{"text":"I hope it’s very soon for your sake, and especially for the children’s sake, you’ll have a revelation about how angry you are. Once you stop being so angry, your world will get better. Your problems will be solved.”","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4391","value":4391},"note":null},{"text":"He liked to find the point in every single memory, even the good ones, where she was telling him who she really was. If he could do that, this could never happen to him again. He whacked off quickly, too quickly,","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4433","value":4433},"note":null},{"text":"Life is a process in which you collect people and prune them when they stop working for you. The only exception to that rule is the friends you make in college.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4470","value":4470},"note":null},{"text":"Freedom from the very thing that makes vacation interesting—which is people different from you and places that are unfamiliar—but also makes it extremely relaxing.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4497","value":4497},"note":null},{"text":"When she spoke, everything was a kind of self-reporting that centered on coincidence or magic. “That would only happen to me!” she ended at least two of her stories. Toby and Seth watched her like panting dogs.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4532","value":4532},"note":null},{"text":"marriage isn’t really about your spouse.”","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4541","value":4541},"note":null},{"text":"sophistication is either your first language or you always have an accent in it.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4889","value":4889},"note":null},{"text":"Even though it didn’t. It looked fun and exactly like the kind of thing that would allow her to have a group of friends she liked and could call and whose houses she could go over to and whose secrets she could know. She watched TV all the time at home so that she would one day know how to approximate normal personhood when she finally got the chance, and there was a show on cable where two best friends would sometimes talk while they brushed each other’s hair, or while one was on a toilet. She used to think about that all the time, the hair brushing and the peeing. What it must feel like for someone to be touching your hair. What it must be like to feel free in front of someone. The girls who played tennis looked like they would brush each other’s hair and urinate in front of one another. Catherine H. did end up taking the tennis lessons and became close with the tennis girls. Then she went to tennis camp, which was sleepaway, where they probably brushed each other’s hair every night and maybe there wasn’t even a door on the bathroom.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4894","value":4894},"note":"Example of callbacks within one paragraph"},{"text":"found a place where she could channel the churning she felt into accomplishment.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4923","value":4923},"note":null},{"text":"The entire phrase “bouncing back” seemed to her like it existed to make fun of her. There was no bouncing. There was no back.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4946","value":4946},"note":"Great rhetoric example"},{"text":"Because she wasn’t a victim like all these women. She was the power. She was the thing that traumatized. She wouldn’t ever be mistaken for the other again.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4973","value":4973},"note":null},{"text":"He had all the people who had ever seen him needy and pathetic and never once did that make it so that they didn’t still love him.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=4993","value":4993},"note":null},{"text":"(the self-righteousness was not a small thing to negotiate in these conversations).","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5002","value":5002},"note":null},{"text":"kind of living that would allow them to participate in the life they’d signed up for.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5008","value":5008},"note":"Odd tacit assumption that they need a wealthy person's life. $284,000 is a lot, even in NYC."},{"text":"Somewhere, deep down, he had chosen her because he knew that meant he could do what he wanted with his life and not be obligated to do anything exclusively for money.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5090","value":5090},"note":"Does this exist in an alternate universe where Doctors aren't in great careers?"},{"text":"It made her every move poignant, like she was being watched, which she was.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5144","value":5144},"note":"Damn"},{"text":"The more time they spent together, the more she realized that Toby’s criticism of her had slowly seeped into her pores and become her own criticism of herself.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5167","value":5167},"note":null},{"text":"“How would it work?” she’d ask, pretending it was just a fantasy when really she was incapable of anything that wasn’t planning.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5169","value":5169},"note":null},{"text":"Those men’s varying degrees of politeness shielded the world from their real feelings, but politeness is ultimately unsustainable. And so that doctor abused her. And those men raped those women. And Sam here couldn’t bear for her to do anything except bend over and take it.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5270","value":5270},"note":null},{"text":"Her success made her poison. Her weakness made her poison.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5282","value":5282},"note":null},{"text":"Circle back circle back circle back. Time was a flat circle back. The entire world wanted to circle back until it ate itself.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5295","value":5295},"note":"Ouroboros"},{"text":"It was all happening near her. Nothing was happening to her.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5325","value":5325},"note":null},{"text":"Nobody had ever done anything for Rachel Fleishman. She had to do it all herself.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5335","value":5335},"note":null},{"text":"which had a mirror behind it and therefore looked like a hundred mirrors.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5356","value":5356},"note":null},{"text":"then saw herself in the reflection and realized she looked like a witch. Into her reflection she made a lion face and growled.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5381","value":5381},"note":null},{"text":"just kind of resuscitating each other,","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5668","value":5668},"note":null},{"text":"This guy would sit with his friends and he would not be able to figure out how all this went so wrong. But she would know; I would know.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5693","value":5693},"note":null},{"text":"didn’t seem to be batshit enthusiastic over another night of bolstering and patting and fellating every insecurity out of them—this","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5709","value":5709},"note":null},{"text":"How could I find my way back to a moment where my life wasn’t a flood of obligations but an endless series of choices, each one designed to teach me something about existence and the world as opposed to marring me for life?","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5712","value":5712},"note":null},{"text":"How could we not impugn marriage, then? It becomes so intertwined with your quality of life, as one of the only institutions operating constantly throughout every other moment of your existence, that the person you are married to doesn’t stand a chance.","isNoteOnly":false,"location":{"url":"kindle://book?action=open&asin=B07H71LX88&location=5762","value":5762},"note":"Criticism of \"bourgeoise\" marriage"}]}