A couple of gems here:

> The States felt like an old place, weirdly older than Europe, a place where, for all its breathless movement, time seemed to have stopped. There was too much of everything: rules, work, wealth, poverty, guns, art.

> Perhaps that was why the Communist regimes all across Eastern and Central Europe collapsed in the final run. Not so much because of their beleaguered economies, although that was an important factor, but because no one believed anymore.