“...The end is so immense, it is its own poetry. It requires little rhetoric. Just state it plainly.”

“The ending is immense. Tell it plainly".”

“Am I mistaken to think that even back then, in the vivid present, the fullness of life stirred our emotions to an extraordinary extent? Has anywhere since so engrossed you in its ocean of details? The detail, the immensity of the detail, the force of the detail,the weight of the detailthe rich endlessness of detail surrounding you in your young life like the six feet of dirt that’ll be packed on your grave when you’re dead”

“What is so often laughable, in the stories of Kundera's Czechoslovakia, is how grimly serious just about everything turns out to be, jokes and games and pleasure included; what's laughable is how terribly little there is to laugh at with any joy.”

“It's human to have a secret, but it's just as human to reveal it sooner or later.”

“Spring me from this role I play of the smothered son in the Jewish joke! Because it's beginning to pall a little at thirty-three!”

“So. Now you know the worst thing I have ever done. I fucked my own family's dinner.”