“We are each born into a situation—a particular body (its race, sex, health...), a set of ancestors, a community, a nation—and born into the stories told of each of these.”

“All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.”

“Each civilization, each nation, each family, each profession, each sex and each class has its own history. Humans have so far been interested mainly in their own private roots, and have therefore never claimed the whole of the inheritance into which they were born, the legacy of everybody’s past experience. Each generation searches only for what it thinks it lacks, and recognizes only what it knows already.”

“...there was always a sort of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other...”

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

“He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival.”