“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

“-"What's that for?"-"Have a little bread with your ice cream," she told me.”

“-And I'm sorry too.-For what?-For calling you an asshole doctor.-That's okay.-Even though, technically, that is what you are.”

“So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontier of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors.”

“He was like a lot of Warmbloods, massive and showy and a bit of a dumb jock...”

“It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word.”

“You have come to a stage where you almost have to work on yourself. You know, on finding some tranquility with which to respond to these things, because I realize that the biggest risk that many of us run is beginning to get inured to the horrors.”