Dukays Book

Epic in the best possible way. So good.

lentil-colored skirts

Countess Menti, whose pretty name of Klementina was pruned at both ends, like the ears and tail of a Doberman pinscher, to produce her nickname, spoke Hungarian badly.

You cannot frame an apology in more meaningful words. Not because women are vain and foolish, no. But there is nothing lovelier, more dramatic, than a dramatic scene unperformed. Lessing put it this way: "True dialogue is the art of omission." p. 209

We've had news of a death at home. Everyone is alike at birth, and dissimilar in death. The circumstances of a man's death reveal his occupation, his character, his entire personality. He falls on the battlefield: a soldier. She drinks lye: a lovelorn little servant girl. Shot while trying to escape: a burglar. Heart failure: a bank director. Thrown from a horse while taking a jump: my grandmother. p. 214

But it was not in Mr. Gruber's nature to look for reasons. That was why he was an ideal secretary. He had been given much fancier assignments in the past. Find out by six in the evening whether Hubermann played any Tschaikovsky after the first intermission of his concert in Brussels last year. Produce a narwhal tusk at least five feet long by eight o'clock Thursday morning. Buy, in your own name, the Domino Motion Picture Theater in Zurich. On Wednesday afternoon between five and six in the Café Meteor in Budapest, slap the face of a character known as Ervin Kugyec. A good secretary does not look for reasons but gets results. p. 437

The people themselves are astonishingly reckless liars, a characteristic which, however, serves to dispel the threat of boredom that attacks Mandria with greater violence than the North wind p. 439

disguised in the obscurity of her own identity p. 465

The voice put down the receiver. It was Vira's voice--Zia had recognized it at once. Vira's "nearsighted" voice, for narrowed eyes make one's voice squint a little too. p. 471

Of course Uncle Fini maintains that cocottes and countesses dress entirely alike these days... p. 473

And indeed, only women know how to strike to the heart of the secrets of destiny with such incalculable glimmers of solitary punctuation marks. p. 594

A typewritten note is always too much like printing and deprives a letter, particularly a woman's letter, of the sudden dash and excitement of the handwriting itself, which speaks more plainly than a facial expression. p. 595

Meanwhile new baby giraffes were born every day... The giraffe story was current when the Jews had more than enough reason to be uneasy, and it told of two Jews who stood before the giraffes' cage in the zoo and silently regarded a newborn giraffe, long-necked and spotted. After a prolonged pause one Jew turned to the other: "What do you think--will this help us at all?" p. 711