“We are rational creatures, Professor Jove explained; hope is irrational. We thus set ourselves up for one dispiriting fall after the next. Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad avoidable disappointments that begin in a thoroughly irrational hope. — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
“Every Jew was the last Jew; Tevye the Terminal, every single one. Yet, Kugel couldn't help but observe, in all that time - no… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
“I spent the best years of my life atoning for something I didn't do, something my parents didn't do, something done just about before… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
“The Kugels, Kugel hated to admit, might just have to, in the event of genocide, rely on the kindness of strangers. Mother used to… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
Vans are the vehicles of murderers. Serial Killers. Rapists. Thieves. Nothing good ever happens in a van. Police should be allowed to arrest van… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
“I kind of like it up here, Kugel said. It's got a certain fatalistic charm, a certain je ne sais fucked.” — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
“He could pull this off. He was sure of it. It would have been one thing to protect Anne Frank from the Nazis; he… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
“He took the diary from Mother's hand and turned it over. The heartbreaking something, he read, of a tragic whatever.” — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
Write something dangerous. Say something you shouldn’t. Blow something up. But well. — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
His intelligence only exacerbated the guilt Kugel felt for bringing him into the world. It was one thing to have condemned a child to… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
Kugel was a firm believer that death was not always a bad thing - that life often reached such levels of crapitude that dying… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
“There is hurt in this world. There is pain. Hoping there won't be only makes it worse.” — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
“… It was the knowing that there had been a happier time, a place of joy and peace and security, that made the sudden… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
...the greatest source of misery in the world, the greatest cause of anguish and hatred and sadness and death, was neither disease nor race… — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
“Remember your grandfather's last words, Jonah would tell his children: Life is nothing more than a little why.” — Shalom Auslander Copy Share Image
