To ask a child to feel sympathy for the poor is harder than getting him to feel sympathy for a chicken or a goat – at least you can see a goat being slaughtered. There is revulsion in death.
. . .
But our own problem is – and I'm talking about all of us – we swallow everything Western civilization gives us. We reject even the best parts of our own culture.
. . .
In America, you see, you're not supposed to take care of the elderly. You're supposed to look after yourself, chase your dreams. But what happens when you grow old? Will your individualism save you? No – you'll be put away like the dead. In America, you see, you die twice – once when you grow old, and once when you actually die. But the illusion of youth must be preserved at all costs. This is what I felt about New York. It was a place you could waste your whole life without thinking once about others – until you too were put away and replaced by the young.
. . .
[Y]our pain only went away when you started thinking about others.
. . .
But he saw now that freedom from pain was a kind of sentence too – your mind, free to cast about in any direction, latched on to every outcome, every path, every regret. Whereas pain was focusing and drew you into yourself. It cut off options.
. . .
As for death? It did not matter. We are only animals, and if we give a complex name to our grief, it is because we like to pretend otherwise.
. . .
[I]t is through the osmotic medium of their children's friends, after all, that parents accidentally learn the most about their own children.
. . .
Sharif felt there had been no great figure in this country ever, that it had always just rolled along, a moody rock, a sticky mess of fictions and chaos and egos – like this fellow: Was his grandfather really great? Or had the mediocrity of the present made him think so?
