[...] yes, throwing parties for money was somewhat cynical, and presumed that young people cared about progress only insofar as they could still have fun. Did people think it was enough to "be liberal"? To feel bad but do nothing? That was of a piece with America's double exceptionalism: how you judged your nation as the most godblessed or goddamned on earth, but also stood apart from it. The body politic had become so fat, so lumpen, that it needed morality incentivized.

[...] For that, Cory was promoted from promoter to outreach manager, and all at once she was proud of her cleverness, relieved that the company was solvent, and furiously disappointed in humanity.

In October, Cory was promoted again, because her boss died.

[...] At the beginning, they threw $5,000-a-plate fundraising dinners that failed completely ("For some reason I expected big gives from the very echelon of society I was trying to eliminate") [...]

[...] "[...] I spent hours driving down Highway 1, not to relax, just to depreciate the car before my wife took half."

[...] She took out the hummus and the soy milk and put the hummus back in and borrowed a nectarine from Jonnie's shelf, and then took the hummus out again, jogging it in her hands to ponder its mass, its lipids and carbs, though she already knew all the numbers to the tenth decimal.

[...] Her efforts to research the housing market crisis ended in page-crumpling fury--credit default swaps? Mortgage-backed securities? Collateralized debt obligations? How could people be moral when morality obliged you to know everything? It was her fault for not studying econ in college, but she'd had so much contempt for the future ibankers that it had seemed principled not to.

"Look at the current offerings," Vanya said, diagramming her sentences with her hands. "Disability forums tend to devolve into group therapy. Sufferers bursting to swap sympathy and pain management tips. It's not fun. It's a conversation able-bodied people can't participate in, and the biggest threat to mainstream penetration. Sable will fight negativity with automated content filtering, crowd moderation, and aggressive brand management."

Will finished his scotch, took up his keys, and drove downtown, returning three hours later with a $20,000 engagement ring. [...]

Without explicitly telling him, she moved in the next day, and found that he was a born lavisher: of back rubs and pharmaceuticals and his freezerful of weed. By day he was some Silicon Valley wanker, clearly grasping for purchased cool. It was embarrassing to date a boy who bought clothes at the same boutiques she shoplifted from, and he had an annoying hard-on for novelty accessories [...]