“...the surfeit of loss in my life has convinced me it will be easier to be grieved for than to grieve."Bethia as an old woman about to die p 257”

“I do not propose to go on as I have been, feeding on the gall of my own grief. For you grieve, and yet you live, and are useful, and bring life to others.”

“How strange it is, Anna. Yesterday, I have filed in my mind as a good day, notwithstanding it was filled with mortal illness and the grieving of the recently bereft. Yet it is a good day, for the simple fact that no one died upon it. We are brought to a sorry state, that we measure what is good by such a shortened yardstick.”

“Now, of all times in my life, did I wish Caleb truly was my brother, rather than that selfish, imperious, weak-willed soul to whom fate had shackled me.”

“I am not a hero. Life has not required it of me.”

“[The haggadah] was made to teach, and it will continue to teach. And it might teach a lot more than just the Exodus story."What do you mean?"Well, from what you've told me, the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You've got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything's humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize 'the other' -- it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists... same old, same old. It seems to me that the book, at this point, bears witness to all that.”

“...The hagaddah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox. p. 361”