“You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses...”

“Our personal fears and emotions are at times stronger than public danger. By keeping them secret, we allow them to remain malignant. You need to be able to articulate something if you want it to go...”

“I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure th...”

“...these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets.”

“I was reminded of a painter friend who had started her career by depicting scenes from life, mainly deserted rooms, abandoned houses and discarded photographs of women. Gradually, her work became m...”

“All our lives my brother and I were caught by the fictions my parents told usfictions about themselves as well as others. Each wanted us to judge the other in his or her favor. Sometimes I felt che...”

“Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.”

“Those who attempt to conquer hatred by hatred are like warriors who take weapons to overcome others who bear arms. This does not end hatred, but gives it room to grow. But, ancient wisdom has advoc...”

“Before you hate something you should try to understand it.”

“Anything was better than nothing. Half-full was better than empty. Ignorance was the lowest form of humiliation and suffering.”

“It is not the pain and the wounds that are the worst. The worst is the humiliation.”

“According to Tobias, women hang around longer because theyre less capable of indignation and better at being humiliated, for what is old age but one long string of indignities? What person of integ...”

“I heard Tash say: Nomi, youre sad man. Get a grip. Walk away. What have I taught you? And I thought: You taught me that some people can leave and some cant and those who can will always be infinite...”

“Sadness, forever unacknowledged, eventually becomes resentment.”

“She resented a universe that forced her to fabricate cover stories for its more inexplicable vagaries.”