... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass ... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.

I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in their vision of things, so that I was always transposing reality for them into something they could understand.

On the wall of our life together hung a gun waiting to be fired in the final act.

Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it.

Morality did not keep well; it required stable conditions; it was costly; it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain.

The furniture and trappings in the apartment are all in a state of flux - here today, gone tomorrow. Nothing is anchored to its place, not even the coffee-pot, which floats off and returns, on the tide of the signora's marine nature.