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Mark Helprin's novels are filled with remarkable sentences that leap off of the page, beg to be rolled over in the mind and on the tongue, and quoted. Sometimes they are quirky and hilarious observations:

``These automobiles,'' Alessandro said, as if he were conceding the existence of a new word, ``are everywhere, like pigeon shit. I haven't seen a naked piazza in ten years. They put them all over the place, so that you can't even move. Someday I'll come home and find automobiles in my kitchen, in all the closets, and in the bathtub.

His narrative is studded with reflections on theology, memory, the relations between parents and children, lovers, friends and comrades, with descriptions of paintings, arias, and aesthetics:

``I was a minor academic. I wrote essays on music and painting because I wanted to listen to music and look at paintings, and because I had to make a living. It was torture. I was too young to aproach a work of art with anything but vigor and joy. Now I am able to write contemplative essays. The war is responsible for that, althought war itself has no aesthetic. Lives that would be brought together to make a graceful end are abrubptly truncated. Characters do not reappear where, by the dictates of a peaceful aesthetic, they should, for they have been killed. The balance between men and women is destroyed. Time loses its fullness. Tranquillity doesn't exist. The lack of an aesthetic empowers the extremes, and they depict war inaccurately, either glorifying it or glorifying its horror, where it is somewhere between pure horror and pure glory, with touches of both.

Simple observations are perfectly distilled:

... the magic of cities is that they provide the illusion of love and family even for those with neither. Lights, the business of the streets, the very buildings close together, the interminable variety and depth, serve to draw lonely people in, and no matter what they know, they still feel in their heart of hearts that someone is waiting to embrace them in perfect love and trust.

Finally, every few pages has a brilliant descriptive paragraph, pure delight. When was the last time you stayed up all night in the outdoors, to watch a meteor shower, or a moon rise? These are favorite subjects, inspiring the reader to trade sleep and dreams for the experience of natural beauty, made sharper by the giving up of physical comfort and the mental comfort of routine:

The beginning of August saw a great meteor shower. At night the River Guard lay on their backs, on the ramparts, and watched the sky disintegrate in trace-like shots of silver and white. The light was silent and the tracks of the stars were as flirtatious as girls in spring. They shined, they smiled, and they disappeared.