“Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.”

“But history is that rare woman who doesn't like to look at herself in the mirror. History, when she finds herself in front of one, wipes and wipes its surface at though in this way she might change her face to something better”

“The cedars 'know the history of the earth better than history itself.' If this was so, it was little wonder that they had clung to life only here, up in these high altitudes where the mountains, ice and wind ensured that the Lebanese who so often took the name of the cedars in vain would rarely appear.”

“I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes heroes, because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my voluntary acts have placed me face to face with death, I cannot recall a single one where any alternative step to that I took occurred to me until many hours later.”

“Then I pulled off her boots, desperate to enter our world of touch and skin, trailed fingers, that strange elation of lovemaking where the body of another can lift you from your own mortal flesh and put you at some height above a bed of twisted sheets and tangled limbs, with no way of knowing where one self starts and the other ends.”

“I'll never forget the first time Davram took me by the scruff of my neck and showed me he was the stronger of us. It was magnificent! If a woman is stronger than her husband, she comes to despise him. She has the choice of either tyrannizing him or else making herself less in order not to make him less. If the husband is strong enough, though, she can be as strong as she is, as strong as she can grow to be.”