Wings of a half finished book across his chest.

It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

I realized that your mother couldn’t see the emptiness, she couldn’t see anything…All of the words I’d written to her over all of those years, had I never said anything to hear at all?

Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.

She was extending a hand I didn’t know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.

Weeks passed like boats waiting to sail into the starless dawn, we were full of aimless endless darkness.

You did not have to finish it,” I said, because I could perceive that he was rebuilding the Great Wall of China with shit bricks.

I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or...

Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!

I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother’s mother. Your father’s mother’s mother’s mother. I hardly knew her. I didn’t have any interest in knowing...

She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to...

I ran rather than walked, anxious to lose my way. All I wanted was to be unsure.

Brod’s life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were...

I said, ‘I need to know how he died.’He flipped back and pointed at, ‘Why?’So I can stop inventing how he died. I’m always inventing.

One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.

Food for her is not food, it is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love. As if the fruit she always offered us were picked from the destroyed brances of...

Her learning to sew (from a book Yankel brought back from Lvov) coincided with her refusal to wear any clothes that she did not make for herself, and when he bought her a book about...

Eleanor Rigby.” It’s true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?

I’m sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.

God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, ‘God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them.” God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from...

We spent our lives making livings.

I wanted to cry but I didn’t, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the room ending our suffering.

Every moment before this one depends on this one.

I don’t want to die.” That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what...

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.

Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they’re nothing.

Songs are as sad as the listener.

SADNESS OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options;...

Not responding is a response–we are equally responsible for what we don’t do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.

…and when is enough proof enough?

He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.

She died in my arms, saying, “I don’t want to die.” That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I...

Mother is a humble woman. Very, very humble. She toils at a small café one hour distance from our home. She presents food and drink to customers there, and says to me, “I mount the...

Before you rush off trying to see everything you can, educate yourself.

I once went to report on a village in Russia, a community of artists who were forced to flee the cities! I’d heard that paintings hung everywhere! I heard you couldn’t see the walls through...

I brought the birdcages to the windows.I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages.I poured the fish down the drain.I took the dogs and cats downstairs and removed their collars.I released the insects onto the...

I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am...

Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.

The next morning I told Mom I couldn’t go to school again, She asked what was wrong. I told her, “The same thing that’s always wrong.” “You’re sick?” “I’m sad.” “About Dad?” “About everything..” She...

Fuck You!’ [Oskar said] ‘Exuse me!’ [His mom said] ‘Sorry. I mean, screw you.’ ‘You need a time-out!’ ‘I need a mausoleum!

…people with nothing to declare carry the most.

Darling,You asked me to write you a letter, so I am writing you a letter. I do not know why I am writing you this letter, or what this letter is supposed to be about,...

If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give...

There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we’re alive.

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand…… But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate...

When she woke up crying for one of her nightmares, the Kolker would stay with her, brush her hair with his hands, collect her tears in thimbles for her to drink the next morning (The...

…only someone who’d never been an animal would put up a sign saying not to feed them….

One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second

(What are your ghosts like?)(They are on the insides of the lids of my eyes.)(This is also where my ghosts reside.)(You have ghosts?)(Of course I have ghosts.)(But you are a child.)(I am not a child.)(But...