Nathan Englander

“It is hard to know what a person would and wouldn't do in any specific instance. And you, spoiled child, apply the rules of civilization to a boy who had only seen its opposite. Maybe the fault for those deaths lies in a system designed for the killing of Tendlers that failed to do its job. An error, a slip that allowed a Tendler, no longer fit, back loose in the world.”

“How terribly unfair that his whole self aches because of the shape of a shoulder, the soft line of a hip.”

“Elke zomer worden de oude mensen kleiner terwijl de kinderen groter worden. Volgens Josh is er maar een bepaalde lengte beschikbaar op aarde en verwisselen de centimeters alleen van eigenaar.”

“Harder than waking from a nightmare was trying to wake herself into one.”

“Čovjekovo pravo biće pokazuje se u tri slučaja. Kad je posrijedi novac, kad govori u srdžbi i kad je pijan.”

“They went off to the Holy Land and went from Orthodox to ultra-Orthodox, which to me sounds like a repackaged detergent–ORTHODOX ULTRA®, now with more deep-healing power.”

“43. My couch is 92 inches; it’s a deep green three-cushion. It seats hundreds. But that’s not why I got it. I got it because, lying down the long way, in the spooning-in-front-of-a-movie way, in the head-to-toe lying with a pair of lamps burning and a pair of people reading, it fits me and another – it fits her – really well.”

“I'd much prefer my books to shoes...In the summer I sometimes take walks without shoes but never without a novel.”