Someone had to be blamed. Someone had to die. (...) What you can't understand, you destroy.

Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.

See, I remember love. That's what people don't understand.

It’s Tolstoy, by the way,” I say as I open the door. He turns around. “What?” Shut up, I tell myself. Shut up. “The writer of Anna Karenina. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the T thing could confuse you.

But then Froi looked back to where his work lay unfinished and it made him sad because there had been something about the touch of earth in his hands that made him feel worthwhile.

Sit back and get some sleep. Oh great. So if we have an accident and I'm asleep my resistance toward fighting death will be down and I'll wake up in a morgue.

Their bedroom has always been our sanctuary. Sometimes at night we'll end up on their bed just talking. My dad will be snoring and Mia will say, "Turn around, Bobby, you're snoring," and he'll turn around and for a moment it'll be silent. Then he'll erupt into a massive snore and Luca and I will kill ourselves laughing and my dad will wake up and bark, "Get to bed!" and not even a second later he'll be snoring and we'll kill ourselves laughing again and Mia will say, "What is this? Grand Central Station?