Quotes from Jonathan Tropper

N]o one ever eats an ice-cream cone at a funeral, or a fire. The Red Cross doesn't drop ice-cream cones into third-world countries. If you're eating an ice-cream cone, it's just very hard to believe things have gone completely to shit. That there isn't still hope.

And as the room starts to fill with the first somber-faced neighbors coming to pay their respects, it becomes clear to me that the reason for filling the shiva house with visitors is most likely to prevent the mourners from tearing each other limb from limb.

Maybe yelling back is a kind of marital diplomacy

In high school, if you can find a girl who will kiss you and maybe let you touch her breasts and a guy who likes the same movies as you, your world is pretty much complete.

And there's a special place in shiva hell reserved for men in sandals, their cracked, hardened toenails, dark with fungus, proudly on display.

People brush past us on the street in endless waves, leaving somewhere, headed somewhere else, laughing, smoking, speaking into cell phones, completely oblivious to the holocaust of an entire world casually imploding in their midst.

Man muss die Originalität des eigenen Lebens infrage stellen wenn es sich mit den Zeilen eines Rocksongs perfekt umschreiben lässt.

You can't let your dog crap on the sidewalk, but it's perfectly acceptable to blow carcinogens down other people's throats. Somewhere along the way, smokers exempted themselves from the social contract.

We knew marriage could be difficult in the same way that we knew there were starving children in Africa. It was a tragic fact but worlds away from our reality.

She got on a plane to see a client in California and somewhere over Colorado, the pilot somehow missed the sky.

I'm not a fan of country music, but there's no better music to drive to. Turn the right song up loud enough on the Porsche's sound system and it will swallow you whole. The past is prelude and the future is a black hole, but right now, hurtling north across state lines for no particular reason, I have to say, it feels pretty good to be me.

Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are not for public consumption, because they would either be hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are. We don't share thoughts, we share carefully sanitized, watered-down versions of them.

And even as she holds on to him, like she's drowning, she can feel the familiar anger returning, like an old song that you've heard so many times it's not even a song anymore, just a wasted pathway in your brain that you can never reclaim.

Phillip, who is congenitally incapable of moderation

Wir sehen Menschen, die wir lieben, meist nur so, wie wir sie im Kopf haben. Hin und wieder aber erhaschen wir zufällig einen Blick darauf, wie sie in Wirklichkeit aussehen, und in den Sekundenbruchteilen, die unser Gehirn braucht, um sich auf die neue Realität einzustellen, kommen kleine Dinge in uns vom Weg ab und wirbeln schreiend irgendeinen Abhang hinunter.

The future just isn't what it used to be

arms stop me from crumpling like a rag doll. Sometimes you don't need to talk things out. Sometimes, with the right person, things just need some time to percolate on their own, without the messy lunge and parry of discussion to hinder them.

Sometimes you don't need to talk things out. Sometimes, with the right person, things just need some time to percolate on their own, without the messy lunge and parry of discussion to hinder them.

Blood will separate, if need be, but its call is primordial, and it won't be refused.

Until you found your way out of the woods, it was reassuring to find other people lost in them with you.

Medömkan är som fisar. Man kan stå ut med sin egen men klarar inte av någons annans.

What would you like to do today?" he says. She gives him a funny look. "What are my options?" "Sky's the limit." She considers it for a moment. "Brunch?" "I say the sky's the limit and all you can come up with is brunch?" "I'm just not sure we live under the same sky.

You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.

Above us, the moon hangs like a fat blister on the feel of the sky, ready to burst in a spray of viscous white pus" chap 22.