“It was something like stirring concrete with my eyelashes.”

“Thus for me, the principal meaning of being a Jew was something people reliably held against me, a barrier to overcome. ”

“I am a law student in my first year at the law, and there are many moments when I am simply a mess.”

“The years roll on and life seems like this more and more, that choices don't really exit in the way I thought they would when I was a child and expected the regal power of adulthood to provide clarity and insight.”

“It wasn't luck or the order of the universe. It was simply what had happened.”

“This is life. You know the philosphers? The Present never stops. There's only the Present. You cheat life if you live in the Past.”

“After a week, it's better. I miss her. I mourn her. But some peace has returned. She had been so unattainable - so young, so much a citizen of a different era - that it is hard to feel fully deprived.”