“Of course he knew what kinds of thoughts these were: the not-always-true ones, conveniently forgetting the other times, when he and Christine had bickered at the smallest thing, aggravated by the other's mere constant presence, and sometimes even said awful things--irreversible and stinging-- that lingered like a foul odor for a long time afterward. Then there were long stretches of calm. And yet the bickering, the irritation, that too was part of the delicate glue that kept them together, still feeling something, even when they grew, sometimes for long periods, bored with each other, tired of each other, before settling back into their more usual, tamed and tamped down but still real and extant love.”

“How lucky Drew was to have this mother of hers, this constant, reliable, if at times irritating presence in her life--this mother, like so many other mothers, beloved and blamed. Lucky she was to have experience, through her mother, the twisted intricaciesof deep, and deeply complex, love.”

“It was the comfort of knowing that she was not quite so strange, that there were other people who found delight in private challenges and quiet lives. People who lived in their thoughts as much as in the real, physical world.”

“. . .how he had loved Christine more than he had understood, that sometimes one forgot what it meant, really, to love, the way the tide of a marriage advances and retreats, . .”

“...She looked at the people around her and felt not just that she was surrounded by strangers, but that she herself was strange, somehow, that something kept her from ever fully bridging the gap between who she was and who all these other people, making their way through the very same day, were.”

“I remember when I left Hungary," Zoltan said, "understanding so completely that literature could save me as much as it could get me killed. Of course it's not like that here. But isn't it funny, that in some ways the price one pays for freedom of speech is ... a kind of indifference.”

“Just like with love. It's all or nothing. ... That's why love is dangerous. We stand up for love. We take risks. Well, you of all people know about that - your own Soviet Russia, an entire nation rearranged to discourage love for anything other than one's country.' Because love caused people to think for themselves, to look out for themselves and their loved ones.”