“That is how we lived, happily and without hope. I was very young then, and I did not miss having a future because I did not know I was entitled to one.”

“I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.”

“If I was telling this story to the girls from back home, I would have to explain to them how it was possible to be drowning in a river of people and also feel so very, very alone.”

“Without light, how can you keep the sight of the eyes? Without a future, how can you preserve the government? [...] We could have a most dilligent Home Secretary of Lunchtime. We could have an excellent Prime Minister of the Quietest Part of the Late Afternoon. But when twilight comes -do you see?- our world disappears. It cannot see beyond the day because you have taken tomorrow. And because you have tomorrow in front of your eyes, you cannot see what is being done today.”

“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.”

“One phone call: I realized it was as simple as that. People wonder how they are ever going to change their lives, but really it is frighteningly easy.”

“I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope.”