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

“The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons -- it was systemic and it was complete.”

“We may not be a great power anymore, we may be into you for sixty-five trillion yuan-pegged, but we're not afraid to use our troops if our spades act up, so watch out, or we'll go fucking nuclear on your yellow asses if you try to cash in your chips.”

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

“All love is socioeconomic. It’s the gradients in status that make arousal possible.”

“Alyosha-Bob and I have an interesting hobby that we indulge whenever possible. We think of ourselves as The Gentlemen Who Like To Rap. Our oeuvre stretches from the old school jams of Ice Cube, Ice-T, and Public Enemy to the sensuous contemporary rhythyms of ghetto tech, a hybrid of Miami bass, Chicago ghetto tracks, and Detroit electronica. The modern reader may be familiar with 'Ass-N-Titties' by DJ Assault, perhaps the seminal work of the genre”

“Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion.”