“So, what if everything in life is an illusion? Well, choose your illusion; Don't let it choose you.”

“It is not the job of writers to life our spirits. Books simply do what they do. They sometimes confirm the capricious drama of a childhood living room. When you think that you are in the grace of a dance you come upon something hard.”

“...if Clinton's answers come off as well-intended lectures, Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy's. "Do you remember," Stevenson said, "that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.' " At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes.”

“And on the sidewalks, after they've emerged from the stations, after being sandpapered by the jostling and scraping that a city like this does, all the lives they've hoarded, all the ghosts they've carried, all the inversions they've made for protection, all the scars and marks and records for recognition - the whole heterogeneous baggage falls out with each step on the pavement. There's so much spillage.”

“If my hair was on fire and llamas came to put it out, he'd tell me the shot was great.”

“A fool will lose tomorrow reaching back for yesterday”

“They were born in the city from people born elsewhere.”