The New Republic

Couples stray,” said Edgar. “Part of the breaking-in process.” “Not breaking in, breaking.” Nicola differed sharply. “You can glue people together again. But then your relationship’s like any other repaired object, with cracks, blobs of epoxy, a little askew. It’s never the same. I can see you haven’t a notion what I’m on about, so you’ll have to take my word for it.” “Christ, you’re a babe in the woods.” Edgar stopped slicing tomatoes. “You got it ass-backward. A marriage perched like porcelain on the mantelpiece is doomed. Sooner or later grown-ups treat each other like shit. You gotta be able to kick the thing around, less like china than an old shoe—bam, under the bed, or walk it through some puddles. No love’s gonna last it if can’t take abuse.

If Edgar sounded overeager, even rushed, the race was with his own temperament. He placed a premium on savvy. Yet since you could only obtain new information by admitting you didn’t know it already, savvy required an apprenticeship as a naive twit. You had to ask crude, obvious questions…you had to sit still while worldly-wise warhorses…fired withering glances as if you were born yesterday. Well, Edgar was born yesterday for the moment, although his tolerance for being treated liked a simpleton was in short supply. He’d needed to rattle off a multitude of stupid questions before he embraced his next incarnation as an insider. The trouble was that savvy coated your brain in plastic like a driver’s license: nothing more could get in. Hence the point at which you decided you knew everything was exactly the point at which you became an ignorant dipshit.

Frankly, the reason why lawyers were compensated so lavishly was that they were paid to attend to the most stultifying aspects of modern life.

At only ten a.m., Edgar found himself already eyeing the Doritos on the counter. One thing he hadn't anticipated about the 'home office' was Snack Syndrome; lately his mental energies divided evenly between his new calling (worrying about money, which substituted neatly for earning it) and not stuffing his face.

Everything was dusty, and the fridge hadn’t been cleaned for months. Inside, the smoked salmon was swimming, the caviar had hatched, and the liqueur-filled dark chocolates had turned fright-white.

I’d no idea that you’d prove such an able apprentice. You were sure to be a journalist, in which case the chances were terribly high that you’d also be a prat.

I’m a journalist, and journalists need news. Deprive them of it, and they go a bit barking. Deprive them of news long enough, and they’ll make their own - much the way the starving will eventually turn to cannibalism.

No such thing as larger-than-life, Kellogg. There's only life-size, and any magnification is just other people's bullshit.