“Men like us are good and proud and strong...if we had a faith, a God, nothing could undermine us. But we had nothing, we had to learn everything, and living for honor alone has its weaknesses...”

“How could any of us truly appreciate our lives if we had nothing else to compare them to?”

“He (God) will have us even though we prefer everything else to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had.”

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

“Everybody has. It wouldn't do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about.”

“Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have been otherwise. If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive their lessons.”