“Sometimes you just find a culture that breaks your heart,” she said finally.”

“I've always thought of writing as sort of active communication.”

“Brain ablaze. Feel like we are unearthing something and finding ourselves, knowing ourselves, stripping odd layers of our upbringing like old paint. Can't write about it fully yet. Don't understand it. I only know that when F leaves and B and I talk I feel like I am saying - and hearing - the first wholly honest words of my life.”

“Surely it is more civilized to kill one man every few months, hold up his head for all to behold, say his name, and return home for a feast than to slaughter nameless millions.”

“That night at Gertie's when she asked me if I preferred to be the one who loved slightly more or loved slightly less. More, I said. Not this time, she said in my ear. I am the one who will always love more. I didn't say, But I love without needing to own. Because I didn't know the difference then.”

“He smelled of cigarettes and whiskey, the smell of Cambridge and youth.”

“Sometimes you just find a culture that breaks your heart,” she said finally.”

“You don’t realise how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense.”

“I asked her if she believed you could ever truly understand another culture. I told her the longer I stayed, the more asinine the attempt seemed, and that what I’d become more interested in is how we believed we could be objective in any way at all, we who each came in with our own personal definitions of kindness, strength, masculinity, femininity, God, civilisation, right and wrong.”

“Go. Go to your beautiful dances, your beautiful ceremonies. And we will bury our dead.”

“You don't realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don't have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense. You have to pay much more attention to everything else when you can't understand the words. Once comprehension comes, so much else falls away. You then rely on their words, and words aren't always the most reliable thing.”