what does it help me to know that the heart is a muscle, just a blood-pumping muscle, if my heart still goes out to him, and the bloody muscle still … - Gail Hareven

"Only someone with an individual voice of his own can describe what is impossible to describe" (p51)

you can never know what will calm the troubled soul: a poem, a philosophical saying, or a silly slogan on the roof of the Jewish Agency. (p272)

Love can be described as compulsive thinking. The thought buzzes and buzzes like an insect stuck to a wet picture...Compulsive thinking latches on to details and dwells on them as if they hold enormous significance which cannot be grasped in a moment. It keeps returning to them again and again as if there is still something left to understand. The more I think about the meaning of these gestures the sicker I get of my thoughts and of myself for thinking them. (p34-5)