“The only thing a person of my age can do is fall in love secretly, silently, likeI had done with Mariana. Fall in love knowing that all is lost and there is no hope.”

“Emilio appeared with wine before Cal could say anything, and Min beamed at him, grateful for the rescue. "Emilio, my darling. I forgot to mention cake boxes. Two hundred cake boxes.""Already on it," Emilio said. "Nonna said you'd need them. She said to get four-inch-square boxes for three-inch-square cakes.""I'm getting the boxes," Min said, nodding. "Sure. Great. Fine. Your grandmother is an angel and you are my hero. And of course, a genius with food.""And you are my favorite customer." Emilio kissed her cheek and disappeared back into the kitchen."I love him," she told Cal."I noticed," Cal said. "Been seeing him behind my back, have you?""Yes," Min said. "We've been having conversations about cake.""Whoa," Cal said. "For you, that's talking dirty.”

“I'm a wonderful disaster. So are you. We're all a mess. We're in this culture that says take this pill and you'll be happy, go on this diet and you'll be thinner, have your teeth whitened, people will love you more.”

“Princeton is a sublime undergraduate university. It has a good architecture school.”

“We've lost touch and allowed technology to take precedence over organic nature. But let's not forget that those microchips in our computers came from elements of the earth.”

“There is a part of me that still wants to go out and grab a backpack and unplug - not take a cellphone or even a camera and just get out there and experience the world and travel. I have yet to do that, but someday I hope.”

“We are all wonderful, beautiful wrecks. That's what connects us--that we're all broken, all beautifully imperfect.”

“The poor you will always have with you,' Jesus said. A warning, Emilio wondered, or an indictment?”

“I keep thinkingThat poetry is something else:A form of love that exists only in silence,In a secret place between two people,Almost always between two strangers”

“Have you noticed how Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen look nothing alike, and yet they both manage to look exactly like their father, Martin?”

“The sacralization of the party opened the way to the sacralization of Stalin when he became the supreme leader. After 1929, the political religion of Russia mainly concentrated on the deification of Stalin, who until his death in 1953 dominated the party and Soviet system like a tyrannical and merciless deity.”