In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.

The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.

He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.

I was filled with angst in college, that I struggled with the question of my future, the meaning of my life - spoiled sheltered rich girl collides with great books and is devastated by her own banality.

I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering that she was, after all, an anthropologist.

...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.