"Selves will accumulate when one isn’t looking, and they don’t always act wisely or well."

"Music, the perfume of hearing, probably began as a religious act, to arouse groups of people."

"Perversion is the erotic form of hatred."

"Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world. But they are shapes, they bring the world into focus, they corral ideas, they hone thoughts, they paint watercolors of perception."

"Without memories we wouldn't know who we are, how we once were, who we'd like to be in the memorable future. We are the sum of our memories."

"The senses don’t just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern."

"What sort of stewards of the future planet will today’s digital children be?"

"They spend their whole lives yelling at the world and each other. They yell at their loved ones, they yell at their enemies, they yell at their dinner, they yell at the big bustling world."

"There is a furnace in our cells, and when we breathe we pass the world through our bodies, brew it lightly, and turn it loose again, gently altered for having known us."

"Writing, which is my form of celebration and prayer, is also my form of inquiry."

"I do feel responsible. He used to be able to look after himself. Now he can't. That's so different, so strange. The big question is: Is more improvement really possible, or should I stop pushing him?' [p. 153]"

"A good strategy should dictate the right actions. Any action mustn't be impulsive, but analyzed along with all its possible outcomes. A solid plan always includes many backups and alternatives."

"In the early years of the Uprising, we survived on one meal a day of horse meat and soup, but by the end we ate only dried peas, dogs, cats and birds."

"Listen, I'd rather lie naked in a plowed field under an incontinent horse for a week than have to read that paragraph again!"

"It began in mystery and it will end in mystery, but what a rare and beautiful country lies in between."

"Our lives together, our duet, also continues to evolve, and even if we can’t go back to how it was, we’re designing a good life for us, in spite of everything."

"Antonina felt convinced that people needed to connect more with their animal nature, but also that animals long for human company, reach out for human attention."

"Every day our life was full of thoughts of the horrible present, and even our own death."

"The Germans have removed, murdered or burned alive tens of thousands of Jews. Out of the three million Polsih Jews, no more than 10 percent remain."

"Sometimes with a flutter of agitated worry that felt like a beetle was trapped inside my ribs. p. 90"

"Still, though no one is an island, most are peninsulas. Our lives wouldn't make sense without personal memories pinned like butterflies against the velvet backdrop of social history."

"Insight roams the sea of the unconscious like the Loch Ness monster, a rumor whose wake occasionally becomes visible, but even then it's mystifying and scarcely believed."

"It's like having a head full of holes, in which the perfect repository of words have shamed themselves," he lamented."

"God may promise not to destroy creation, but it is not a promise humankind made - to our peril."