“How come all the harmless people were so lame? Maybe that was the definition of safe.”

“A Stalin functionary admitted, "Innocent people were arrested: naturally - otherwise no one would be frightened. If people, he said, were arrested only for specific misdemeanours, all the others would feel safe and so become ripe for treason.”

“We really wanted to know all the unknowable things about each other and how we were the same and how we were different, if we even were, maybe nobody is.”

“Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.”

“Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.”

“We were willing to do so much for the people we loved, even if it meant hurting ourselves. Maybe that, in the end, was what love- all kinds- was really about.”

“When it comes to money, most people want to play it safe and feel secure. So passion does not direct them. Fear does.”

“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”

“All right, he thought, so the details were not perfect. But maybe, in a sense, that was part of the magic, too.”

“How can I feel so melancholy for so terrible a past? Maybe it's just the nature of us, ever wishing for things that were and could be rather than things that are and will be.”