Hope: A Tragedy

THE SUN WAS IN THE SKY like a something.

Maybe Godot shows up in act three, my son; maybe the audience is just leaving too early. ESTRAGON: Where’d they all go? VLADIMIR: They were just here.

The breeze blew like a whatever.

On the contrary, my worry is that we will someday reach such an unsettling level of peace, such a level of happiness and joy, that we’ll engage in the most brutal war of all, a thousand Holocausts rolled into one, because peace frightens us. Expecting hell, we’re ill prepared for heaven.

You’re going to scare him, Kugel said, looking deep into her eyes. Somebody has to, Mother replied.

We think of the obvious signs of love—tenderness, concern, care—and yet somehow, nothing said more about the health of a couple’s relationship than whether or not they went to bed at the same time.

Tall people appeared to have it easy; that was what Kugel found so galling. Like things just went their way. Let’s go buy a house! Let’s get expensive diving watches! Why not, we’re tall!

Protecting a child from the outside world is easy, said Anne Frank as Kugel struggled to descend; his leg ached and he could only hold on, awkwardly, with his one good hand. Protecting him from his inner world, Anne Frank continued, is quite a bit more complicated.

Jonah had always been a sickly child; he was spiritually gorgeous and physically a mess. Kind and generous and giving, and sneezing and coughing and diarrheic.