“There was a way of looking at the world where practically every single thing that happened had some kind of double meaning.”
“My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, as a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic.”
“Our history teacher had the most boring voice in the world and no teaching skils to speak of. Every single class, he read aloud in a monotonous tone. Yeah, fascinating. Double history on a Monday morning was a punishment from God.”
“It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.”
“When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only one before.”
“... every single act we do has the potential of causing pain, and every single thing we do has consequences that echo way beyond what we can imagine. It doesn't mean we shouldn't act. It means we should act carefully. Everything matters [p. 41].”