“Will the day tell its secret Before it disappears, Becomes timeless night.”

“Before they disappeared into the night, Bella said, 'Why do you think anyone wants to conquer someone else?'I don't know.'Really not?'Maybe to discover that person's secret.'And then what?'Then it's been discovered.'Or not.'Well, then you have to conquer that person again.'Again and again,' she said. 'Every day, every night.”

“Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him.”

“Richard Wagner once declared that civilization disappears before music like mist before the sun. he never dreamed that one day, for its part, music would disappear before civilization, before democracy, like mist before the sun.”

“there's time for laughing and there's time for crying— for hoping for despair for peace for longing —a time for growing and a time for dying: a night for silence and a day for singingbut more than all(as all your more than eyes tell me)there is a time for timelessness”

“Nothing is simple if your mind is a fetch-and-carry wanderer from sliced perilous outer world to secret safe inner world; if when night comes your thought creeps out like a furred animal concealed in the dark, to find, seize, and kill its food and drag it back to the secret house in the secret world, only to discover that the secret world has disappeared or has so enlarged that it's a public nightmare.”