“On one side you have book burners, Congressional wives and Pat Robertson. On the other side, you have vulgar comedians, foul-mouthed rap groups and Dennis Hopper—all your choices should be so easy.”

“every night i say prayers for him just so he knows that when my dayends and i'm ready to dream he will always be one of the last wakingthoughts i have and perhaps one of the first dreams of my sleepingnight...”

“it doesn't hurt to be alone sometimes. to go out on a cold night andwalk for a while. it might be dangerous, someone could hurt you, thereare sad scenes, passersby who leave a lifetime along the way for youto pick up and examine, papers blowing in the wind with strangemessages, maybe something hopeful that you save and cherish forever.”

“i try to avoid people's eyes because i don't like to get that intimatewith just anybody. i don't need the responsibility.”

“To find someone suddenly gone, to see them one day and not know that this will be the last day you see them, to not have the moment register until hours, days later, or years is never easy. How we catch ourselves as life moves forward, thinking about that last moment and about what we might have done differently, if only we'd known.”

“One might go to the bakery, perhaps," he said. "But did you know the baker has tuberculosis? All the people here run around in a highly infectious state. The baker's daughter has tuberculosis too, it seems to have something to do with the runoff from the cellulose factory, with the steam that the locomotives have spewed out for decades, with the bad diet that people eat. Almost all of them have cankered lung lobes, pneumothorax and pneumoperitoneum are endemic. They have tuberculosis of the lungs, the head, the arms and legs. All of them have tubercular abscesses somewhere on their bodies. The valley is notorious for tuberculosis. You will find every form of it here: skin tuberculosis, brain tuberculosis, intestinal tuberculosis. Many cases of meningitis, which is deadly within hours. The workmen have tuberculosis from the dirt they dig around in, the farmers have it from their dogs and the infected milk. The majority of the people have galloping consumption. Moreover," he said, "the effect of the new drugs, of streptomycin for example, is nil. Did you know the knacker has tuberculosis? That the landlady has tuberculosis? That the landlady has tuberculosis? That her daughters have been to sanatoria on three occasions? Tuberculosis is by no means on the way out. People claim it is curable. but that's what the pharmaceutical industry says. In fact, tuberculosis is as incurable as it always was. Even people who have been inoculated against it come down with it. Often those who have it the worst are the ones who look so healthy that you wouldn't suspect they were ill at all. Their rosy faces are utterly at variance with their ravaged lungs. You keep running into people who've had to endure a cautery or, at the very least, a transverse lesion. Most of them have had their lives ruined by failed reconstructive surgery." We didn't go to the bakery. Straight home instead.”

“His arms closed around them. While the storm raged outside,he held them protectively. Anna buried her face in one side of his neck,David in the other. His hands cupped the backs of their heads,pressing them closer.Things were hurled against the cellar door with such impetus that David's small fist gripped a handful of his shirt. And he knew that this was what mattered. They mattered. He mattered to them. All the rest of it all the rest of it evaporated into insignificance..”