How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it heavy walls, and we will furnish it with soft red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker, that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweler's felt so that we should never hear it. (11.84)
Brod and Yankel create a new world from the stories that they tell themselves. Are they lying to each other to create love? And if they are, is what they're doing any different than what a novelist like, say, Jonathan Safran Foer, would do to evoke feelings of love in a book like, say, Everything is Illuminated?
Quote #5
Love, in your writing, is the immovability of truth. (14.13)
This one's a real head-scratcher, but we think it means something like this: love means being able to confront the truth about a situation (or a person) and not trying to invent stories to make it seem better or different. Do you agree? Is "love" just another way of saying "absolute acceptance"?
Quote #6
I am so wanting to know what happens to Brod and the Kolker. Will she love him? Say yes. I hope that you say yes. It will prove a thing to me. (14.15)
Yeah, we're wondering too. What will love between Brod and the Kolker prove to Alex? Will it prove that love can actually exist? That the past isn't just one unremitting series of horrors? Or that terrible events (like rape) can eventually lead to happiness (like loving the man who kills your rapist)? Hm. We're not sure we'd want that last one proved.