"On September 11, 2001, Bob Dylan released Love and Theft, his thirty- first studio album. On the twelfth song, my song, he sings, “Look up, look up—seek your maker—’fore Gabriel blows his horn.” I know he’s talking to me, so I look up."
"There are three domino tiles lying on the table. A cloud of smoke rises up around the four players; it’s going nowhere, no breeze comes in through the windows. Someone huffs impatiently. Fatso Comodoro looks back and forth between his seven tiles and the three lying on the table. It’s his turn, but he doesn’t make a move, he’s afraid of a wrong play."
"Dear Rabbi Cattan, I’ve followed all of your instructions ever since moving to Israel to breed pigs. I put them in a stilt pen over the sea just like the Hawaiians do. Not a single hoof will touch Holy Ground. Except, of course, if you agree that we should use them to hunt down terrorists."
"We met at the supermarket. I was waiting in line to buy the usual nutrient-free snacks—crackers, cookies, Pop Tarts. She pulled up behind me with a cart full of staples—milk, eggs, canned tomatoes. As we neared the register, she unbuttoned her bright orange trench coat and searched its inside pocket. Whatever she expected to find there was missing."
"The child held on to Clem’s hand throughout the bus ride. There were lots of stops and the brakes were jerky, and after an hour she murmured, “I feel sick.” Back at Sinclair House it would have been a risky admission, but Clem didn’t seem cross at all. “Nearly there,” he said, elbowing her as he rummaged in his coat pocket. “See if you can’t hold on another ten minutes.” She nodded as Clem blew the fuzz off a mint imperial and pressed it into her mitten."
"The Professor was a better drill sergeant and a better sermonizer than Mark, and because he had no interest whatsoever in the students’ lives outside the classroom and rebuffed every attempt Mark made to share any facts about their health or families or personal struggles, the Professor was also a better and a more useful critic of their written work."
"Today the city is singing, exulting in the passage of its emperor, with Wingate by his side—and he wonders what a victory is, when no battle has been won."
"Bunny Tyler believed in God and Tupperware. I’m not sure which she believed in more. Wherever she went, she carried a duck-egg handbag containing a Bible, a revolutionary cheese grater, and a storage pot. One hand remained on the clasp, ready to whip out the contents at any given moment, should anyone need spiritual guidance."
"I am thirty years old and that is nothing. I know what this sounds like, and I hesitate to begin with something so obvious, but let me say it anyway, at the risk of sounding naive. And let it stand alongside this: six years ago, a man I knew vanished from his home in the mountains."
"Straightening, Mumma wiped her eyes and stood, told Agnes: Wait here, and returned with a bag of cloth-scraps. Inside Agnes recognized one of Lillian’s old rompers, a torn undershirt of their father’s. These go in there, her mother said, nodding first at the scraps and then toward the place from which blood flowed and had begun to tinge the bathwater."
"They bring her out. Not blindfolded, but eyes widened to the last sky, the last light. The last cold bites her fingers and her face, the stones bruise her bare feet. There will be more stones, before the end."
"It was almost the end of the ninth month in the Tibetan calendar, but it was still hot in the city, on top of which his fur jacket was a bit too thick, making him sweat profusely and feel an unbearable thirst. He really regretted that he hadn’t worn something lighter yesterday."
"They arrive in Tilly’s Cadillac, Uncle Andrew behind the wheel. He gets out, tall and lanky, and stretches his back before swinging the door shut. He’s a runner, a high-school math teacher and track coach on his second marriage. He has traveled the country running marathons, and in Boston and New York he places high in his age group; in smaller marathons he sometimes wins; he founded the Bloomfield Runners Club and for years has trained his students on weekends and summer break; he is a disappointment to his mother."
"The morning of the solar eclipse began like any other. Rue de Belleville was already littered with pedestrians. Car horns rang out. Metal grill gates thrashed upward. Children whined as mothers dragged them to school. Pensioners, in no particular hurry, made their way to the park, greeting one another in slow motion, while young professionals rushed by in a beeline to the metro station."
"The muskrat is an important animal. It lives in holes. It seldom experiences any of the extreme forms of anxiety. It is not in holes because of that. It does not fear nuclear attack. It smells bad, hence the name. It smells good to other muskrats. We have no idea how it smells to other muskrats. At what point will we cease being fond of it? It used to be valued in coats. They were not called muskrat coats because that was too much like rat coats. It doesn’t like being made into coats."
"Since last night I haven’t done a thing to save the world. While Sister Taddea tells us one of her stories with an unhappy ending, I think back to my expedition into the enemy encampment and to one phrase in particular that I overheard: “He needs to find his own way.” The meaning is clear, I have to figure out what particular route will allow me to save the world, but the word “way” for some reason makes my thoughts turn strange and I imagine the way as a street, paved with asphalt, with white lines painted on it."
"Our Christmas party that year (1916) was gay and interesting. The house was made lovely with bright coloured paper garlands and evergreen swags and Chinese lanterns. We acted a play which Katherine Mansfield hurriedly wrote called The Laurels. Dr Kite, the chief character, was played by Lytton Strachey, who was a wonderful actor. I don’t remember it very vividly, except that he wore a great fur coat and a paper mask with a red worsted beard, made for him by Carrington."
"Carson insists that his determination to arm Ulster is ultimately grounded in a wish to prevent Ireland’s partition. He declares that he, too, wants a unified Ireland—but one that remains in the old union with Britain."
"Another year and I think I should say goodbye to the island for good. For four years I’ve moved from one enclosed space to another, and this last winter I descended several moldy steps to begin living in an underground room."
"To begin with, there was the malaria. I had been in Gabon in the Peace Corps, where my job was to help people improve their nutrition and access potable water. I helped design and implement a water filtration system and was in the midst of building a community center with a large kitchen and a bare-bones medical clinic. I swam with hippos, danced myself, with thirty others, into a trance state, read a lot of Ian Fleming novels, and lost almost twenty pounds."
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