We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the version of the world they really believed in.

You can tell when something's not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don't go away.

Their desire was silent yet magnificent, like a thousand daisies attuning their faces toward the path of the sun.

On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.

We Greeks are a moody people. Suicide makes sense to us. Putting up Christmas lights after your own daughter does it--that makes no sense. What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.” -Mrs. Karafilis

All of a sudden America wasn't about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was about something that had happened for two minutes four hundred years ago, instead of everything that had happened since. Instead of everything that was happening now!