“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.”

“You are not dumb, Yevette. All of us who have got this far, all of us who have survived- how can we be dumb? Dumb could not come this far,I am telling you.”

“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.”

“Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living. To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well-- here is the truth-- you have to talk yourself out of it.”

“What is an adventure? That depends on where you are starting from. Little girls in your country, they hide in the gap between the washing machine and the refrigerator and they make believe they are in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around them. Me and my sister, we used to hide in a gap in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around us, and make believe that we had a washing machine and a refrigerator. You live in a world of machines and you dream off things with beating hearts. We dream of machines, because we see where beating hearts have left us.”

“...a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. . . We must see all scars as beauty... Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you... You must hear them the way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive.”

“your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house. ”