It was as if Hannah had sprung a leak and her character, usually so meticulous and contained, was spilling all over the place.

It was never the act itself but our own understanding of it that defeated us, over and over again.

Always live your life with your biography in mind.

It’s hard, in America, not to equate ‘happiness’ with ‘things’.

Well, life isn't a cakewalk, is it?! Eighty-nine percent of the world's most valuable art was created by men living in rat-infested flats. You think Velásquez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the luxuries of central heating and twenty-four-hour pizza delivery?!

In America, people of a certain age ask, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' In my house you were more likely to be asked, 'Where were you when you first read 'The Catcher In The Rye?

…how monstrous the people you loved could be.