The Invention of Solitude

“You will note that where you would think should be the end of Jonah, there was his safety.”

It is a way of living one’s life so that nothing is ever lost.

The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory.

Hence the paradox at the heart of the book: the prophecy would remain true only if he did not speak it. But then, of course, there would be no prophecy, and Jonah would no longer be a prophet.

Now and then, A. finds himself looking at a work of art with the same eyes he uses to look at the world. To read the imaginary in this way is to destroy it.

Himmler: “I have made the decision to annihilate every Jewish child from the face of the earth.”

“In this most Christian of worlds / All poets are Jews.”

“All the unhappiness of man stems from one thing only: that he is incapable of staying quietly in his room.”

Except for a brief moment when he was hired as an assistant in Thomas Edison’s laboratory (only to have the job taken away from him the next day because Edison learned he was a Jew), my father never worked for anyone but himself.