How we cite our quotes: (Page.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Traditions are born by the power of an initial thrust that hurls acts and ideas across the centuries. Had the death by fire of those individuals been such a thrust? Was my ancestor's act of atonement to extend through all generations of the family line?(324.4)
This meditation on the past is particularly useful when it comes to understanding the ideas of tradition and ancestry in this book. Here we can see Asher confronting the notion of tradition, something with which he has greatly struggled in the past. Maybe he should have watched Fiddler on the Roof for some pointers.
Quote #8
Now I thought of my mother and began to sense something of her years of anguish. Standing between two different ways of giving meaning to the world, and at the same time possessed by her own fears and memories, she had moved now toward me, now toward my father, keeping both worlds of meaning alive, nourishing with her tiny being, and despite her torments, both me and my father. (325.3)
Asher's own past is full of family tensions and tragedy. When he is able to reflect on his own past, he is able to create art that lends meaning to events that have troubled him and his family. Unfortunately, his creations only make things even more troubling in the end.
Quote #9
Do we really all grow old so quickly? There is so little time. (340.4)
This is one of the more fascinating ideas of past and future in the book: namely, that the future bleeds into the past, and that's how time passes. Asher thinks this thought about Yudel Krinsky and is imagining how he, too, will someday be a thing of the past.