“Children get acquainted with each other in a special way, they do not make contracts as adults, they believe each other or not. Childish friendships often end in violence. You may become an enemy all of a sudden as well as notice that you are someone's best friend.”

“Memory is like glass. A person who has died is still visible, very close. But we can no longer contact each other. Death is mute; it excludes conversations, only allows silence.”

“We’re always being made promises,’ she said. ‘You make them yourselfand you listen to others giving theirs. Politicians are always goingon about providing a better quality of life for people as they get older,and a health service in which nobody ever gets bedsores. Banks promiseyou high interest rates, some food promises to make you lose weight ifyou eat it, and body creams guarantee old age with fewer wrinkles. Lifeis quite simply a matter of cruising along in your own little boat througha constantly changing but never-ending stream of promises. And howmany do we remember? We forget the ones we would like to remember,and we remember the ones we’d prefer to forget.”

“The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born.”

“Key rings rattle throughout history. Each key, each lock has its tale.”

“Letters...People do not write the truth; they write the things that, they believe, you would like to read.”

“You think you know everything about a person, but the truth often comes as a surprise.”