“I like the way we talk to each other. It feels honest. It was different with Manuel. One of us always had to win. Husbands and wives do that, worry more about being right than being truthful.”

“Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.” “That’s a lie.” “No. It’s just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war.”

“We stand there for a moment, looking at each other, and in that instant I feel our connection so strongly it's as though it achieves physical existence, becomes a hand all around us, cupping us together, protecting us. This is what people are always talking about when they talk about god: this feeling, of being held and understood and protected. feeling this way seems about as close to saying a prayer as you could get...”

“the harsh truth of every relationship, even between those who love each other, like fathers and sons and daughters, or husbands and wives, is that the love is always unequal.”

“If we could carry an awareness of being with us into each day, allowing it to influence the way we do things, and how we relate to others, we might find ourselves living a very different kind of life; maybe then we would fully embrace the deeper truth of what it means to be a human being.”

“[H]alf blinded you embraced your own body, and with the warmth still under your jacket, you walked up the pavement along the square, moving through the grey light, and let your thoughts seep softly in, undisturbed, on the way up to the station, but also walking as one of many in the chill of December. I liked the feeling being a we, being more than myself, being larger than myself, being surrounded by others in a way I had never experienced before, of belonging, and it made no difference if those who walked to the left or the right of me, in front or behind me on this street, did not share the same feeling.”