Jenny Offill

Remember this sign, this tree, this broken-down street. Remember it is possible to feel this way. There were twenty days on the calendar, then fifteen, then ten, then the day I packed my car and left. I drove the length of two states, sobbing, heat like a hand against my chest. But I didn’t. I didn’t remember it.

Sometimes at night I conduct interviews with myself.

What do you want?

I don’t know.

What do you want?

I don’t know.

What seems to be the problem?

Just leave me alone

How is that even possible?” the philosopher says. “He’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”

She knows. She knows. So it begs the question, doesn’t it? Did she unkind and ungood and untrue him?

When she tells people she might move to the country, they say, “But aren’t you afraid you’re going to get lonely?”

Get?

The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind

What Rilke said: I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

“Do you ever wish you were thirty again?” asks the lonely heart engineer. “No, never,” I say.

Studies have shown that 94% of college professors think that they do above average work.

Why didn’t I have more kids so I could have more chances?

Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters?

Old person worry: What if everything I do does?