Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.

Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad.

Well, you will have to do. If you had died along with your mother, I would have taught the cat to read.

Perhaps illnesses could be left behind, just like small, badly concealed china corpses.

That," he whispered, "is unthinkable." In Mosca’s experience, such statements generally meant that a thing was perfectly thinkable, but that the speaker did not want to think it.

We always find it difficult to forgive our heroes for being human.

True stories seldom have endings. I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.