"There was no one like my mother, for straight talk."
"My daughter Iris," my father said. I could hear my mother breathe in.
"The whole college came to my mother’s funeral."
"You’re not living in that dreadful town anymore and you’re not Eva Logan anymore, he said. You’re Eva Acton."
"May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty."
"Your sister plans ahead," he said. "You are more hey-nonny-nonny."
"God gave us memory, so we could have roses in December."
"Why indeed? These lovebirds are ready to bill and coo in their new nest and we wish them all the best!"
"You stick with the big books and the little glasses."
"In the Old Testament, God delivered people. He rescued them from their enemies, from the wicked, from famine, from the grave."
"You know my sisters in New York," he said. "Encarnación and Beatriz. Carnie and Bea. The girls say they know about a job for Edgar, being a butler"—he didn’t look at my father—"and for you, Iris, teaching some little kids. Let’s say, a governess."
"You’ve suffered an untoward blow from which you are not going to recover quickly."
"One does not, if one can possibly help it, take advantage of one’s true friends."
"And, wheresoever thou move, good luck shall fling her old shoe after."
"It was the war and people were showing up in all sorts of fatherless, motherless, husbandless combinations."
"I tried on three or four outfits every morning, because I knew that one of these days, Reenie would see me and love me and turn her life upside down for me."
"You want the guy who shows you every day, shoveling the walk, carrying your groceries, shows you how much he loves you."
"Clara understood that race was more than a matter of appearance, but it was also a matter of appearance."
"If I follow my impulses in this matter, I will have to steal the Torelli silver, pawn it at that place we passed tonight, and, unless I am very clever, spend the rest of my quiet life in the state penitentiary."
"The Torellis liked daily naps for their children and big meals of good food."
"Too bad money and taste don’t live together."
"You don’t have to be a beauty queen," she said. "You just have to look normal attractive because you’re in our shop."
"I just wanted to begin my own life, one that didn’t include my relatives."
"It’s good to be smart, it’s better to be lucky."
"All I wanted was some soft, firm shoulder to lean against, a capable hand setting me right and making me breakfast."
"You know what Oscar Wilde said—women are meant to be loved, not understood."
"We may be enemy aliens but, by God, these people are really foreigners."
"When you and I met, I wasn’t exactly father material."
"I’m in love with these two little girls: fat, funny Anna with the biggest blue eyes you ever saw, and Carolyn, with the freckles, already a serious woman."
"They swapped the German POWs for American POWs today. The Americans cheered and hugged one another."
"I don’t know what I would do without my girls. I am the happy version of King Lear, a lucky man with three lovely daughters."
"Your father doesn’t mind appearing foolish. That’s a good thing."
"I wish I could turn left and go to the Torellis’, instead of taking a quick right to the carriage house."
"I hadn’t loved her but I had liked her and she had taken care of Danny and made my sister happy and that was, pretty much, good enough for me."
"If I’d had money, I would have gone for opulent fabric and Oriental rugs and maybe a little samovar whistling in the corner."
"Every kind of child, every kind of medieval healer, every kind of dear departed auntie, serves as someone’s guide to the spirit world."
"Maybe all Jewish women are Eleanor Roosevelt—better-looking, not as good a writer, but the good heart, the sharp mind, the endless mixing into other people’s business."
"The Jews say there were three worlds, Drei velten: Die velt (this world), yene velt (the next world) and Roosevelt."
"Two starving Jews, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Ellenbogen, are sitting on a park bench, sharing their last piece of bread."
"Real money is privacy, real money is that if you scream, no one hears but the servants."
"Luck is both good and bad. We do our best, but in the end, the good luck and the bad luck reveal to us who we are; they don’t make us who we are."
"Music was such a national language of that period, because of radio. So many people listened attentively to music ... it was such a deep communicator."
"Keep your mouth shut and see what’s happening around you. Don’t finish people’s sentences for them. Don’t just hear what they say, but also how they behave while they’re saying it."
"I looked for mothers the way drunks look for bars."
"I remember some things at a gallop, some moments from Ohio bearing down upon me in huge detail, and other things that are no more than small leaves floating on a stream."
"Memory seems as faulty, as misunderstood and misguided, as every other thought or spasm that passes through us."
"Everything surprised me and nothing frightened me."