The History of Love: A Novel

himself: I am going to plagiarize my friend who was murdered by the Nazis.

For picking a lock where I came from I was a thief, but here in America I was a professional.

Litvinoff’s life was defined by a delight in the weight of the real; his friend’s by a rejection of reality, with its army of flat-footed facts.

As the rifles were pointed at his chest he wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard.

Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.

grateful for the world which purposefully puts divisions in place so that we can overcome them, feeling the joy of getting closer, even if deep down we can never forget the sadness of our insurmountable differences.

My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it. It was like living with an elephant. His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom. To reach the armoire to get a pair of underpants he had to crawl under the truth, praying it wouldn’t choose that moment to sit on his fac