“The realization that my parents, too, felt pain and fear frightened me more than any strangers could.”

“Music, I'd heard him say, was like dessert. He could live without it, but life just wasn't as good.”

“Telling my story was supposed to be a good thing but it had just made everything worse.”

“I was so tired of his being even-keeled in the face of all that was upsetting and ugly and illogical.”

“Some people say the Balkans is just inherently violent. That we have to fight a war every fifty years.""I hope that's not true", I said.”

“I tried to think of a singularly American superstition. I'd learned a few from the Unclessomething about not letting one's shoes touch the kitchen tablebut those were all imported from the Old Worl...”

“Of course, it is boring to read about boring thing, but it is better to read something that makes you yawn with boredom than something that will make you weep uncontrollably, pound your fists again...”

“Dearest creature in creation,Study English pronunciation.I will teach you in my verseSounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.I will keep you, Suzy, busy,Make your head with heat grow dizzy.Tear...”

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages dow...”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”