At times I feel very pessimistic—for whom are we writing? Then I think of you—you, who give so much and receive so little, who go on with your work—a… - Blume Lempel

“You must understand,” she [Mrs. Zagretti] says, “the fly was a kind of soul mate for me. Whenever I came home it flew to greet me. It followed me from room to room. At night when I got into bed it would circle around the night light. Around and around and around — it must have hatched in late summer so that its life was just beginning when all the others of its species had already died. I could feel the tragedy of being left all alone in the world — all ties severed and paths overgrown, all friends and relations annihilated without a trace, condemned by fate to live out its one and only life in anguish . . .” Betty wants to say that she knows many people who were orphaned and left alone in the world not because of a mistake in the calendar but because of the calculated, brutal, organized murder of a people.

Life, my dear, is a garden full of all kinds of plants," Mrs. Zagretti said. "People, too, are plants that must be cultivated if they are to reach their highest potential.

“A house without a picture, my mother used to say, is like a heart without a god,” Mrs. Zagretti says. “When I pray to God, I need a picture in front of my eyes.” “We Jews carry God in our hearts,” Betty replies with an edge in her voice.