
The Candy House: A Novel

The defector is a typical—likely an impressionist—beguiled by a fantasy of freedom and escape. It is a state of mind I can grasp only theoretically. There is nothing original about human behavior.
Jennifer Egan • The Candy House: A Novel
How can the architecture contain all those lives? Why doesn’t it explode from the pressure?
Jennifer Egan • The Candy House: A Novel
In the new heroism, the goal is to transcend individual life, with its petty pains and loves, in favor of the dazzling collective.
Jennifer Egan • The Candy House: A Novel
One horror of motherhood lies in the moments when she can see both the exquisiteness of her child and his utter inconsequence to others.
Jennifer Egan • The Candy House: A Novel
I see now that the place I’ve been yearning for is my own imagination.
Jennifer Egan • The Candy House: A Novel
The fact that so many thoughts could have gone through my head in 3.36 seconds is testament to the infinitude of an individual consciousness. There is no end to it, no way to measure it. Consciousness is like the cosmos multiplied by the number of people alive in the world (assuming that consciousness dies when we do, and it may not) because each
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She struggles to believe that Piers is as real as she is—as full of thoughts and memories and feelings.
Jennifer Egan • The Candy House: A Novel
Roxy marvels at the deep absorption of the players, who never seem impatient. It’s as if the rest of life has slowed to match the pace of the game.
Jennifer Egan • The Candy House: A Novel
Here was his father’s parting gift: a galaxy of human lives hurtling toward his curiosity. From a distance they faded into uniformity, but they were moving, each propelled by a singular force that was inexhaustible. The collective. He was feeling the collective without any machinery at all. And its stories, infinite and particular, would be his to
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