“There are no uncontaminated angels”

“There’s no remaking reality... Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.”

“Rimane il fatto che, in ogni modo, capire bene la gente non è vivere. Vivere è capirla male, capirla male e male e poi male e, dopo un attento riesame, ancora male. Ecco come sappiamo di essere vivi: sbagliando. Forse la cosa migliore sarebbe dimenticare di aver ragione o torto sulla gente e godersi semplicemente la gita. Ma se ci riuscite... Beh, siete fortunati.”

“It's so heartbreaking, violence, when it's in a house-like seeing the clothes in a tree after an explosion. You may be prepared to see death but not the clothes in the tree.”

“... a nervous, undernourished girl who continually looked down the front of her gown as though there was some sort of construction project going on under her clothes.”

“I did not want to voice a word that would lift the cover and reveal that hideous emotion I always felt for her, the underside of love.”

“Mr. Levov was one of those slum-reared Jewish fathers whose rough-hewn, undereducated perspective goaded a whole generation of striving, college-educated Jewish sons: a father for whom everything is an unshakable duty, for whom there is a right way and wrong way and nothing in between, a father whose compound of ambitions, biases, and beliefs is so unruffled by careful thinking that he isn't as easy to escape from as he seems. Limited men with limitless energy; men quick to be friendly and quick to be fed up; men for whom the most serious thing in life is to keep going despite everything. And we were there sons. It was our job to love them.”