“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.”

“I'd studied English since the first grade but considered it a murky language, one whose grammar seemed to have been made up on the fly”

“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...”

“War is what happens when language fails.”

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

“The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”