“Two decades of virtually uninterrupted fighting had made even the most dignified structures appear drunken, wounded, or lost. The entire city seemed to affirm the notion that warfare is a disease.”

“Less than a decade after the Great Exhibition, iron as a structural material was finished—which makes it slightly odd that the most iconic structure of the entire century, about to rise over Paris, was made of that doomed material. I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time.”

“The city was dark except for the building lights that seemed to appear like sores - like bandaids had been ripped off to expose the city's skin.”

“The fact is television doesn't simply reflect society's values. In important ways, it also legitimizes them. And more and more in recent decades it has made even the most dubious "values" and behaviors seem normal and routine.”

“...the Russian church had lost in its first decade of 'freedom' what Soviet believers had managed to hold on to under communisn for most of a century.”

“He tried to give his wife pleasure in little ways, because he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. It was never intentional. They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life.”