His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him.

- Maile Meloy

To be a kid is to be invisible and to listen, and to interpret things that aren't necessarily meant for you to hear--because how else do you find out…

- Maile Meloy

The role of the human brain was to rationalize suffering.

- Maile Meloy

When they started to drain a swamp where birds and fish had lived, for a new housing development down the road from his apartment, Steven watched the…

- Maile Meloy

I settled in with The Uninvited Guests thinking I knew what kind of Edwardian pleasures were in store: the fraught dinner party in an endangered, ram…

- Maile Meloy

At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.

- Maile Meloy

Diabetes is passed that way -- over and down, like a knight in chess.

- Maile Meloy

The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?

- Maile Meloy