“If you stop thinking, if you stop wondering, you die.”

“Whatever you may think of Judaism, Lyuba, in the end it’s just a codified system of anxieties.”

“That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.”

“Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality.”

“I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.”

“You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes.”

“By reading this message you are denying its existence and implying consent.”