Dept. of Speculation is gorgeous, funny, a profound and profoundly moving work of art. Jenny Offill is a master of form and feeling, and she gets life on the page in new, startling ways.

I bought an energy bar, and as I ate it a great weariness came over me.

Yes, we could solve for why, but we could also eat another slice of coconut cake.

I'm a citizen of the republic of empathy.

I felt as though I were snorting cocaine, or rappelling down a cliffside, or cliffsurfing off a cliff of pure cocaine.

Write what you know. Write what you don't know. But most of all, write what you'd rather not know.

This country was built on the backs of dudes who drank on buses. What we do honors them.

No emotion or insight is too small to inflict on the world. Let it all fly. Don't let it eat you from the inside.

The bullshit never ends. That’s the main thing to remember. It never ends.

Shudder, in fact, is not quite the word for the feeling. Feeling is not quite the word for the feeling. How's bathing at knifepoint in the phlegm of the dead? Is that a feeling?

Stuff me in a tutu and let's screen experimental videos all day.

The transformed person is a revolutionary only because he has revolutionized himself. He gives the people inspiration by holding up a mirror to their inner substance.

Shall we mourn here deedless forever a shadow-folk mist-haunting dropping vain tears in the thankless sea

There is nothing true anywhere, The true is nowhere to be seen; If you say you see the true, This seeing is not the true one.

You will never feel loved until you love yourself.

The Times is getting more detestable (but that is too weak word) than ever.

The fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves, and imputing all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the demons.

Monarchists frequently declare that without the royal family, Britain would be 'nothing.' What a woeful lack of love for one's country such statements express.

The result was I went nowhere.

Yielding to emotions such as anger or hurt or defensiveness will drive away the Holy Ghost.

We figure great careers aren't made. They're experienced.