“What spares us is memory,” he said. “It’s what makes us worth saving. However low we sink, whatever promise we no longer fulfill, we tell our stories. That’s why you’re so important, Charlie. You’re a guardian of our national memory.”

“Sometimes, however much you plan, however many precautions you take, something happens, and in a minute the world is changed. After that, you’re the person on the other side of that minute.”

“The problem with escaping is that we leave behind us, even among those we love, different versions of the truth and everything we couldn’t bring ourselves to say.”

“Aren’t autobiographies born in a question we ask ourselves: how did I get to this point? Don’t we look back over the path and tell ourselves a story? This is how it happened. This is who I am.”

“Sometimes we do terrible things to the ones we love just to see what harm we can cause.”

“Take a seat, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll kill you in a few minutes. It’ll be good for you.”

“Every American autobiography, someone once said, is about one thing—escape. Look into the frightened heart of an American life, and you’ll find a compulsion to flee—a seed planted in the national character at the start by those ships sailing out of Europe and landing on our shores. — Teller: A Novel”