The idea that we've outgrown ends up limiting us and we have to make a choice about what we're going to do in our lives.

The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces.

...The plural of elf is elves! What a language! What a world!

That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, 'Good day,' Litvinoff often paused so long to weigh evidence that by the time he'd settled on an answer the person had gone on his way, leaving him standing alone.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

I left the library. Crossing the street, I was hit head-on by a brutal loneliness. I felt dark and hollow. Abandoned, unnoticed, forgotten, I stood on the sidewalk, a nothing, a gatherer of dust. People hurried past me. and everyone who walked by was happier than I. I felt the old envy. I would have given anything to be one of them.

To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.