My boots were so heavy that I was glad there was a column beneath us. How could such a lonely person have been living so close to me my whole life? If I had known, I would have gone up to keep him company.

I'm deeply curious about Jewish things. I've toyed around with the idea of going to rabbinical school.

Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are.

I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?

Things were happening around us, but nothing was happening between us.

I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it?

I am not a bad person. I am a good person who has lived in a bad time." Alex's grandfather..Everything is Illuminated