“I'm sorry," I said, "did you just say elections are about hope?”

“I'm thirty-six years old and I've been married once and he left and I don't want to feel this way anymore. Like I can't be vulnerable. Can't relax. It's exhausting, always being on the defensive, keeping my guard up. I feel like Cuba.”

“Staring up at me, hearing my tired voice, he reached out his tiny hand. He knew me, even though he had never seen me before. And I knew him. He was the love I'd been trying to express my whole life.”

“There are things in this world that no human being should be able to endure. We should die of heartbreak, but we do not. Instead, we are forced to survive, to bear witness.”

“Though I knew in my mind that others had felt such loss, this loss was mine, and I felt that no one would ever understand it, and to try to explain the lonliness and pain I felt would be futile.”

“We are men who find chess fascinating. Did you expect our lives to be secretly interesting?”

“A guy is on the radio talking about the war.Speculating.Speculating.Speculating.He says in less than two hours, we shall fight to preserve freedom.Freedom.America wants to give another country freedom.That doesn't sound that bad, or does it.”