“These soldiers had done what they had done, and been done unto in return. This was how it went.In the cycle of slaughter, reprisal begat reprisal, forever.”
“...the cycle of reprisal and counter reprisal that had characterized their national history had to be broken and that the only way to do this was to go beyond retributive justice to restorative justice, to move on to forgiveness, because without it there was no future.”
“If thats how it was done, and thats how it had always been done, there had to be a reason”
“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once done well is done forever.”
“Whatever her husband had done, it couldn't be as bad as what she herself had done.”
“Why? What had she ever done? What had any of them ever done? To give a child only to take him away. To make and then unmake, as if a family weren't built of lives but of things that could be broken, returned, thrown out--”