“I could remember a half-dozen incidents in which I'd come much closer to death, but I could never recall any past moronic stunt that filled me so completely with disgust.”

“The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind.”

“... Promise me you won't do anything stupid.""Thanks for the vote of confidence. I'd been planning to come up with the most moronic plan I could think of, but I guess now I won't.”

“If I'd known how wrong I was - if I'd had any idea of the awful night that lay ahead - I'd have run after him and never returned to that disgusting circus of blood, that revolting circus of death.”

“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.”

“We'd been apart so long--I'd been dead so long," she said in English. "I thought surely you'd built a new life, with no room in it for me. I'd hoped that.""My life is nothing but room for you." I said. "It could never be filled by anyone but you.”