“We are at war, and in time of war there is only one rule. Form your battalion and fight.”
“I never wanted to safe... I wanted to be good.”
“From the front row of the balcony, I look out over the Uptown Cinema. The red velvet seats are emptying, the credits scrolling up the screen. Ginger Rogers married a Nazi, but Cary Grant got her out of it. Their ship is sailing to America; sun burns away the fog and the wind blows free. Now they are gone and I am coming back to reality, breathing a harsher air. It is how I always feel when a movie ends.”
“I have crossed over, and that childhood is as far away and strange as something that happened to someone else in a land beyond the sea. That boy is not me, though I am what he became.”
“I feel an emptiness open in my chest, coupled with a strange downward pull in my throat. I think, this is my heart sinking.”
“There is no suspension, no whispered prayer for silk to stop my fall. There is only the falling, and it goes on and on, in fierce silence and sharp bursts of breath.”
“I never wanted to be safe, I wanted to be good.”
“But for a moment I stay there, suspended above the green swell of the land as though thrown up onto the crest of a wave, seeing for the first time a break in the at horizon. For this the boats crossed the ocean, the wagons climbed the mountain pass. For this the songs were sung with desert all around. This is what is given: the promise there is still a way, if we can find it, the promise we can always be renewed.”
“I never wanted to be safe... I wanted to be good.”
“This is what happens to people who aren’t like you,” Clara continues. “When you get scared, of course they’re the first to feel it.”
“The social contract imposes obligations on citizens, but it does so in exchange for rights, and the government may not deny the rights while it insists on the obligations.”
“ ‘A republic, if you can keep it,”
“Consummation is consumption
We cannot consummate our bliss and not consume
All joys are cakes and vanish in eating
All bliss is sugar's melting in the mouth”
“I’ll wait until we’re both older,” the kid went on, “and then I’ll nail her.”Van hit the brakes. “What?”“Like you and Aunt Irene.”Panic beginning to set in, Van asked again, “What?”“That’s what you told her last night when I was scrubbing the pots from dinner. You were going to nail her. Then you laughed.”Oh, shit. “Uh, Ric . . .”“And so I’ll just wait until my future mate and I are older and then I’ll nail her. Or we’ll nail each other. That sounds like more fun. Nailing each other.”“Listen, Ulrich—”“What is that, anyway? Nailing? The way Aunt Irene smiled when you said it; I’m guessing its fun, right?”
“You must watch and wait, Branza, to see what powers you have and don't have. It is not like home. We ruled there. Everything fell into place around what we wanted. Here, we are not the only ones wanting, and we must make room for other people's desires.”
“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.”
“The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.”
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