In a sick country every step to health is an insult to those who live on its sickness.

Being born a Jew meant being vulnerable to history, including its worst errors. Accident and history had involved Yakov Bok as he had never dreamed he could be involved. The involvement was, in a way of speaking, impersonal, but the effect, his misery and suffering, were not. The suffering was personal, painful, and possibly endless.

It’s one thing for a man not to know, not to have learned; it’s another not to be able to live by what one does know.

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime.

I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.

She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes – clearly her father’s – were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust.

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course.

We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.

When I don’t feel hurt, I hope they bury me.

His blood changed to falling snow.