“Expats of any country are quick to lose their sense of humour, beaten down by a lifetime of defending the land they no longer live in.”

“Grief produces an abundant energy that must find a way to burn itself up. And that is the fundamental problem, one that can take a lifetime to exhaust.”

“Religion didn't matter to the city drunks but they knew it mattered to the village people. What the city people wanted was land. Power. But because that all sounds rather greedy and a bit crass, they made it religious and ethnic.”

“It's my experience that people want to do something, but become confused by an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, not knowing what to do, and in the end do the only thing they believe they possibly can: nothing.”

“Surely, when looking back, our lives can, for the most part, be accounted for in our interactions with others. That is where memories are stored, in one another. And yet each person is unique enough in his or her own thoughts that no two people are going to remember the same experience in the same way.”

“If there was a bad guy we could appeal to the people because, like it or not, we, the huddled masses, want our public figures to be good or bad but rarely allow them to mix the two. Not good an bad. We place people in these categories, which then creates a smooth story-line but also a dichotomy. It's why we like our male movie stars to be either bad boys or heroes, our leading ladies sluts or soccer moms. We like our politicians to be tough guys or saints. What we don't like are any signs of actual humanity, a mixture of the two. So we are left with the question: who is the bad guy? And is the bad guy in control of all that is bad?”

“Someone who spoke English had been listening to his speeches of promised freedom and would have realized they were the drunken lies of men who have titles of power but no authority to exercise it.”