Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories

Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.

I did not want to voice a word that would lift the cover and reveal that hideous emotion I always felt for her, the underside of love.

How far back must you go to discover the beginning of trouble?

Curiously, the darkness seemed to have something to do with Harriet, Ron's intended, and I thought for a time that it was simply the reality of Harriet's arrival that had dramatized the passing of time: we had been talking about it and now suddenly it was here — just as Brenda's departure would be here before we knew it.

... a nervous, undernourished girl who continually looked down the front of her gown as though there was some sort of construction project going on under her clothes.

old Blotnik had been mumbling so steadily for so many years, Ozzie suspected he had memorized the prayers and forgotten all about God. “It

None of us ate together: my Aunt Gladys ate at five o’clock, my cousin Susan at five-thirty, me at six, and my uncle at six-thirty. There is nothing to explain this beyond the fact that my aunt is crazy.

We’ll go to the most posh gynecologist in New York. One who gets Harper’s Bazaar for the reception room. How does that sound?

LaHill was a dark, burly fellow whose hair curled out of his clothes wherever it could.