But the thought arrived inside her like a train: Marya Morevna, all in black, here and now, was a point at which all the women she had been met—the Yaichkan and the Leningrader and the chyerti maiden; the girl who saw the birds, and the girl who never did—the woman she was and the woman she might have been and the woman she would always be, forever intersecting and colliding, a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks, over and over.

When people get rich, they cut themselves off from the context that has earned them these riches - the context of the common men. They forget they are part of society.

No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one.

Language is never fully trustworthy, but when it comes to eating animals, words are as often used to misdirect and camouflage as they are to communicate. Some words, like veal, help us forget what we are actually talking about. Some, like free-range, can mislead those whose consciences seek clarification. Some, like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing.

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!