“All children are love children, he said, but only the best ones are ever called that.”

“On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere. New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realized that he has no intention of ever leaving it again.”

“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.”

“Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within...By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.”

“Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude. If it is true that we can ever come to know another human being, even to a small degree, it is only to the extent that he is willing to make himself known. A man will say: I am cold. Or else he will say nothing, and we will see him shivering. Either way, we will know that he is cold. But what of the man who says nothing and does not shiver? Where all is intractable, here all is hermetic and evasive, one can do no more than observe. But whether one can make sense of what he observes is another matter entirely”

“Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.”

“When she was three, I sent her to day care for a coupleof hours every morning. After a few weeks, the teachercalled me and said that she was worried about Lucy. When itwas time for the children to have their milk, Lucy would alwayshang back until all the other kids had taken a carton beforeshe'd take one for herself. The teacher didn't understand. Goget your milk, she'd say to Lucy, but Lucy would always waitaround until there was just one carton left. It took a while for meto figure it out. Lucy didn't know which carton was supposed tobe her milk. She thought all the other kids knew which oneswere theirs, and if she waited until there was only one carton inthe box, that one had to be hers. Do you see what I'm talkingabout, Uncle Nat? She's a little weird—but intelligent weird, ifyou know what I mean. Not like anyone else. If I hadn't usedthe wordjust, you would have known where I was all along . . .”