Quotes from Chris Moriarty

The trouble with friends was that you couldn't get rid of them. There was no way to take back a friendship in the wake of betrayal or disappointment. The friendship, and everything that went with it, stayed. It just became unreliable, like an abandoned house; you still knew where all the rooms were, and which stairs creaked underfoot, but you had to check every floorboard for rot before trusting your weight to it.

You don't trust people because they're a sure bet or even a good risk. You trust them because the risk that you'll lose them is worse than the risk that they'll hurt you.

Arkady looked at the other man. he felt that he was actually seeing him as a physical being for the first time.....He tried to imagine that body with Bella, with any woman, and found the idea...not repulsive exactly, but incomprehensible. How would it work exactly? And how would either of them, knowing nothing of their lover's body, needs and desires, ever be able to satisfy the other?

Well, that explains the repeated commission of wanton acts of poetry. I was starting to feel like I was being punished for my earthly sins by being trapped in an A. S. Byatt novel.

What do I know from dybbuks? I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist. The only people in the Lower East Side who know from dybbuks are rabbis. And they're all just gutless bourgeois reactionaries who want us to let the Morgaunts of the world stomp all over us so we can reap our reward in heaven or Brooklyn— neither of which, allow me to point out, has ever been scientifically proven to exist.

Oy, veh ! And where were the Italian speakers yesterday when we needed them?" "Today we need Russian!" "Russian? Who needs Russian? I need Litvaks! Are there any Litvaks in here? Anyone here even know what the heck a Litvak is?" "And I need—excuse me, dearie, what language is that you're speakin'?—Well, gracious me, I don't even know what I need! A mind reader, maybe!

You've been handed a chance in life, and I want you to grab it with both hands and not look back.