“Before you bombed my boy Osama I always thought an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches hold inside you and the noise never stops…I live in an inferno where you could shiver with cold Osama. This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop.”

“I hope this letter reaches you (Osama) anyway. I hope it finds you before the Americans do otherwise I'm going to wish I hadn't bothered aren't I?”

“You may think that's funny Osama but you never can squeeze every last bit of pride out of a human being. It's like a tube of toothpaste. You can twist it and you can crush it but there's always a tiny bit left isn't there?”

“The Thames was cold and it was the colour of the dishwater at the end of the washing up. I remember looking up through it and seeing the light pale brown and far above and wondering if I would sink farther or float up to it. I stayed down for the longest time Osama. I wouldn't mind drowning but I did float up in the end. Somehow I always seem to.”

“I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us. ”

“I smiled down at Charlie, and I understood that he would be free now even if I would not. In this way the life that was in me would find its way in him now. It was not a sad feeling. I felt my heart take off lightly like a butterfly and I thought, yes, this is it, something has survived in me, something that does not need to run anymore, because it is worth more than all the money in the world and its currency, its true home, is the living. And not just the living in this particular country or in that particular country, but the secret, irresistible heart of the living. I smiled back at Charlie and I knew that the hopes of this whole human world could fit inside one soul.”

“I do not think you are wrong for living the life you were born in. A dog must be a dog and a wolf must be a wolf, that is the proverb in my county”