I went to the open window. The middle of night was all I could see - the moon was hiding; all the streetlamps were broken. I could barely make out the brick wall nearby, the one which had once formed a building, and which, with the abandoned building next to it, was where the passersby would urinate. How many people Jesus had seen urinating by that wall! He had wondered: why do they always urinate in that same place, when so many apartment buildings are around? Then, he went to that place and discovered that his was the only window that penetrated into that poor man's toilet.

– Verse 602 from the chapter called Adolescence

Americans were not almighty; they were not invincible. They were not powerless: they were powerful. They were a fortress: a living fortress. Fortress America! The only people who knew what was going on were the people inside the fortress; everybody outside the fortress was waiting to find out: there was no way to spy from the outside. You had to be in the fortress, and so many people were left out.

– Verse 84 from the chapter called Childhood

Jesus punched in the words 'Fannie Mae Mac' and 'Zeus.' Unfortunately, too many people named Fannie Mae Mac had something to say about Zeus. Jesus tried adding the word 'Mars' to the search parameters, but, unfortunately, Zeus had everything to do with the red planet - all the people named Fannie Mae Mac were keen to point that out. Jesus was stuck. There was nothing else to go on - except for a feeling: a bad one congesting in the pit of Jesus's stomach. Just as a whim (he told himself), Jesus punched in the words 'Fannie Mae Mac,' then 'Zeus,' then 'Mars,' and then 'Alexandria, Virginia.'

– Verse 745 from the chapter called Adolescence

Some people gave themselves problems. Alcohol was the chief method. For many people, alcoholism was only a symptom. For others, it was what could only be described as a strange and tragically unnecessary life choice. In Treblinka, there was a couple nicknamed the model marriage. Every afternoon, they were seen stumbling hand in hand with wide smiles on their faces. They were drunk, having spent the entire morning walking around town, asking for spare change. "Thirty cents," the woman begged. "That's all I need: for bread." Meanwhile, the man always went to the soup kitchen at the convent. "And one for my wife," he would say, smiling. Then, he would take the soup outside and sell it to some slightly richer man for loose change. Afterwards, the woman went. "One for my husband, too," she would say, smiling. Then, she would sell some slightly richer woman some soup. After a while, the nuns got wise. They began insisting on eating in: no take-out. The model marriage moved elsewhere, having lost their primary source of income.

– Verse 345 from the chapter called Adolescence

"The funny thing is: we never got lost. Every time we thought we were lost, we stopped, asked for directions, and it turned out we were on the right road. That happened about twenty times. But worst of all was near the end: they built so many new roads around here, I thought we were really lost. Turned out, just like all the other times, we weren't being patient enough: we kept turning off the road too soon. We hadn't seen the sign yet 'cause we hadn't gotten to it. But how many people we had to wake up to find out! At three in the morning! Two hundred kilometers or whatever it was, we had taken ten hours to cross. Every time we were going at a steady pace, which, for us, meant top speed on level terrain (the only time we were going any faster was coasting downhill), I looked at the speedometer and it said fifty-five kilometers an hour: there was no way that was true. It never fell below thirty even if we were crawling along. Oh, but we blew a tire! That was a god-awful disaster. It took a whole hour to change. My grandfather was so stubborn: he had to do it himself. And then the car rolled off the jack - what a mess! In the pouring rain!

– Verse 214 from the chapter called Adolescence