"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."
"Though the snow picked up as Fu pulled into Pennington, the town still felt sunny and sweet. Fu’s driving stayed solid, but the ice made him slow his speed, giving David ample time to scan the neighborhood. Lots of yuletide cheer and a distinct lack of corporate presence."
"The lavender shawl looked good on my language, it covered its overly long neck and gave its unspoken appearance both gentleness and resoluteness. Now all of that’s gone and my language doesn’t even turn its collar up."
"He remembered her having been mad for several years, but the A Liang he had just seen was like a dewy lotus flower. He suspected he had mistaken someone else for her."
"Again I approach the Church, St. Joseph’s at Howard and Tenth, south of Market in San Francisco. It’s a disconcerting structure, in late Mission style, but capped with two gold domed towers out of some Russian Orthodox dream. I’m following two uniformed cops, in the late afternoon this October, we’re followed by the sun as we mount the steps to the big brass doors and enter into the darkness of the nave."
"The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died."
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