“Great books are the ones that are urgent, life-changing, the ones that crack open the reader’s skull and heart.”

“A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.”

“The second anniversary opened an internal crack in Sonia, a fissure through which she released the explosive feeling that had horrified her for two years. The conflagration that had burned so many, that had pushed people into the open air, onto the ledges from which they jumped, some of them on fire, had left its unspeakable images inside my niece. ...Sonia didn't want a world in which buildings fell down and wars were fought for no reason.”

“I've always thought of wholeness and integration as necessary myths. We're fragmented beings who cement ourselves together, but there are always cracks. Living with the cracks is part of being, well, reasonably healthy”

“I've often thought that one of us is what we imagine, that each of us normalizes the terrible strangeness of inner life with a variety of convenient fictions.”

“Om jag inte kände det jag känner när jag ser dig skulle du vara någon annan. Det vore hemskt. Om jag inte mindes att jag älskar dig, menar jag. (190)”

“Memory changes as a person matures.”