...hope nourishes while loss empties a person out," he said.... "Lila, my love, my love, ...lay down your weapons. Don't punish us because I told myself a different story than the one you told yourself.

— Anat Talshir

It doesn't matter how old you are," Lila said. "What matters is how you live.

— Anat Talshir

Sometimes rebuffing him was a difficult, but this evening Margo whispered something about the prohibition on sex during the Yom Kippur holiday--as if they were a family of rabbis!--and he gave in and turned on his side. Rejected and repelled, he would fall into his nighttime sleep; in just a few moments she would hear that sound she hated, the heavy breathing that would rise to his nostrils and turn into a saw-like din, and Margo would wonder whether to shake him or let him be. If she awakens him, there was a chance he might start probing all over again; if she let him snore, he would disrupt her thinking, and she would not be able to give herself over to the brilliant idea she had come up with while staring in the mirror.

— Anat Talshir

When big things happen," he holds her, "time flows differently. For instance, who says the world was created in six days? Maybe a day was like sixty years. Or even a thousand of a million, like it says in Psalms: For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past.

— Anat Talshir