“You will have the last word.' 'Your name will be that word.”

“The girl's face hollowed with resignation; it had been a long time, but Sonja remembered what it was to have that face, what it was to feel you were no brighter than the dumbest man, no stronger th...”

“She felt as buoyantly patriotic as her Chechen classmates who could trace their family trees back to the acorns”

“Her mother stared in quiet awe of this more artful rearrangement of her genetic code, and slipped into a contentedness that usually appeared only after the red wine had fallen below the bottle label.”

“Then Brezhnev grabbed the wheel of power and captained the country with the exploratory heart of a municipal bus driver.”

“Time became more important the closer to death one was, so an extra few hours to make peace with the world were worth more than years.”

“It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory”

“Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain...”

“Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.”