“I didn't remember what month that was, or what year even. I only knew the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become. ”

“A sob caught in my chest. I didn't even know what a gray was, other than a drab color. All I knew was that I was hungry all the time. And I knew, deep down, that it wasn't just for food.”

“If a memory wasn't a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then would be coloured by what had happened in between. It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.”

“What I didn't understand, all those years when I was waiting for my life to start, was that it had already started. I was already living it! Those were the most important years, and I didn't even know it.”

“Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do. ”

“We must remember that the test of our religious principles lies not just in what we say, not only in our prayers, not even in living blameless lives - but in what we do for others”