"The war seems to stretch backwards into memory and forwards into the unknown future. Maybe it will go on for ever. The inhabitants of Mesto scratch an existence as best they can, living off potatoes and turnips and beets, things grubbed out of the earth and tasting of the earth." (Part 3, Lanik, p. 319).

"Hana leans forward and presses her lips against the warm swelling. The contact evokes in Liesel a vague and unnerving sense of sexual desire, focused not on Hana but on her own body, which is so foreign and so strange, so heavy with the future." (Part 1, Hana, p. 45).

"He smiles and she feels iridescently happy, as though lights have been turned on, multicolored lights that shimmer and wobble and reflect off moving mirrors. This man has a vision that he is realizing for her alone, for her and Viktor and their baby. It seems fantastic...