The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.

Did you know that there is no exact rhyme in the Russian language for the word 'pravda'? Ponder and weigh this insufficiency in your mind. Doesn't that just echo down the canyons of your soul?

He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds.

Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.

A couple's first task, it has always seemed to me, is to solve the problem of breakfast; if this can be worked out amicably, most other difficulties can too.