“We see our troubles through the filter of our own imperfection...”

“The frown again. So much contained there in the flex of a few muscles. All of history, it sometimes seemed to me. All of ours, at least.”

“Some people use their own hurt as an excuse for hurting others”

“I have a tremendous fascination with the United States of America, the grand, swirling variousness of it, the way it siphons off the ambitious, the poor, and the abused from so many other nations, the ability we seem to have to be noble and heroic at the same time as we are being arrogant and stupid.”

“Families are like countries. They have their own language and jokes and secrets and assumptions about the right and wrong ways of doing things, and some of that always shows in the children, the way something of Germany or Australia always shows in a German or an Australian, no matter where they go. Outsiders like it or they don't, they feel at home there or they don't. It's like the taste of cilantro.”

“You keep telling yourself it will be different. Year after year, time after time, you keep telling yourself things might change. It's what makes people go back to people they shouldn't ever go back to.”

“...it was like being in the start of an earthquake. Before that, whatever else happened, however bad things had been, you were at least sure the ground would stay still.”