“Since when are you so 'faithful'? just a couple of years ago you would show up in your tight jeans and borrow our car to pick up one of your five girlfriends. You think that beard makes you a man of God?”

“And since when is stealing people's possessions the call of God? you are all hypocrites who have suddenly come into power, and you don't know how to handle it”

“Think about it, but don't think too much. If you think too much you'll end up doing nothing.”

“New York loves expanse. It grows upward and spreads its tentacles outward, the island spilling into adjoining lands through its many bridges and tunnels. A person given to idleness, as Parvis has come to think of himself, must move about for the sake of moving, if only to fit into the general scheme of things - an electron obeying the current. Tantamount to movement, he has come to realize, is self-reliance, a fact reflected in the language: "Take care," a friend may say to another as the two part. In his old life the same two friends would have said to one another, khodahfez - "may God protect you.”

“A man has a right to want to live.”

“What an illusion, she thinks, the idea of an ordered, ordinary life.”

“No whitness lost is so white as the memory of whitness”