MY BRILLIANT FRIEND by Elena Ferrante

“If Pasquale’s love was a sign of how much someone could like Lila, the love of Marcello—a young man who was handsome and wealthy, with a car, who was harsh and violent, a Camorrist, used, that is, to taking the women he wanted—was, in my eyes, in the eyes of all my contemporaries, and in spite of his bad reputation, in fact, perhaps even because of it, a promotion, the transition from skinny little girl to woman capable of making anyone bend to her will.”

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins

“The weekend stretches out ahead of me, forty-eight empty hours to fill. I lift the can to my mouth again, but there’s not a drop left.”

AMERICANAH by Chimamada Ngozi Adiche

“Princeton, in the summer, smelled of nothing, and although Ifemelu liked the tranquil greenness of the many trees, the clean streets and stately homes, the delicately overpriced shops, and the quiet, abiding air of earned grace, it was this, the lack of a smell, that most appealed to her, perhaps because the other American cities she knew well had all smelled distinctly.”

IS EVERYONE HANGING OUT WITHOUT ME? AND OTHER CONCERNS by Mindy Kaling

“One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.”

 Part iii coming soon!

Better late than never. Here are a few of my favorites:

IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT by Judy Blume

“Miri Ammerman and her best friend, Natalie Osner, were sprawled on their bellies on the thick, tweedy wall-to-wall carpet of Natalie’s den, waiting for the first-ever televised lighting of the famous Christmas tree. The den was Miri’s favorite room in Natalie’s house, not least because of the seventeen-inch Zenith, inside a pale wood cabinet, the biggest television Miri had ever seen.”

THE WIFE by Meg Wolitzer

“The men would long for armored writing, protected writing, writing that was muscle-bound and never ceased flexing itself.”

RARE AS THE KOTUKU by Camille Norvaisas

“Outside the morning window, the pine limbs

are weighted with snow, like punished schoolboys,

arms parallel to the floor, dictionary upon each palm…”

A SMALL INDISCRETION by Jan Ellison

“Each scarf cost a pound, and I bought them from an Indian woman who kept a stall in the tube station at Victoria, where I caught my train to work. They were thin, crinkled things, not the sort of scarves that ought to be worn to work in an office or that offered any protection against the cold…The money I spent on them, and the habit I adopted of wearing a different one each day, seems to me now a haphazard indulgence, an attempt to prove that I was the kind of girl capable of throwing herself headlong into an affair with her boss–a married man twice her age–and escaping without consequence.”

WONDER BOYS by Michael Chabon

“That’s a big trunk…It fits a tuba, three suitcases, a dead body, and a garment bag almost perfectly.”