“It was a very American story, somehow. 'Lost.' Each community had such stories. Possibly, each family.”

“A lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is to talk, to interrupt one another, and to devour each other if possible.”

“There could be no romance in the terrible possibility that Gretel Nissenbaum had fled on foot, alone, not to her family but simply to escape from her life; in what exigency of need, what despondency of spirit, no name might be given it by any who have not experienced it.”

“How crucial for us to rehearse the future, in words.Never to doubt that you will live to utter them.Never to doubt that you will tell your story.”

“Baseball, football, basketball - these quintessentially American pastimes are recognizably sports because they involve play: they are games. One plays football, one doesn't play boxing...The boxing match is the very image, the more terrifying for being so stylized, of mankind's collective aggression; its ongoing historical madness.”

“...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds; for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot.”

“The dilemma is, in the United States, each penniless citizen believes that, with luck, he might become a millionaire; and so doesn't want to put restraints on "robber barons"-he might become one one day!”