“Sometimes we wait too long for the forgiveness of our fathers.”

“Sometimes if you wait too long, it's too late.”

“The rich...should beg the poor to forgive us for the bread we bring them. Healthy people sometimes feel they need to beg forgiveness too, although there is no reason why. Maybe we simply ask forgiveness for not being born where these poor women have been born, knowing that if we lived here too, our fate might well have been the same.”

“Most of us have small, sad places somewhere in our hearts and my father was no exception. Sometimes we let our feelings escape in bursts of anger. Sometimes we make long, dismal faces. My father did neither. He felt deeply but he kept his feelings to himself. Or rather, being a writer, he let them escape in his writing. But even here he disguised them, unable even in fiction to allow himself to take himself too seriously.”

“..we were always taught, instead of waiting to be swept off our feet, to 'expect little, forgive much'.”

“We shouldn’t wait too long for anything or anyone that we really care about.”