“Hunger sharpens your ingenuity, she would always conclude with a laugh.”

“One of the effects of being crazily, obsessively in love is that it dulls your senses, your capacity for perception, till you no longer notice what is happening around you.”

“... living a life filled with deprivation and working from sunrise to sunset from your earliest years isn't to anybody's taste.”

“And yet for that, blood is thicker than water, even if the only thing you've shared with your people have been hardships and miseries.”

“My day had already had a good dose of bitterness, and I preferred to keep it from getting any sadder.”

“Sometimes luck decides to make our decisions for us, no?”

“All those invisible presences ... began to transform themselves into companions that were more or less volatile, more or less intense, companions that I'd have to learn to live with. They invaded my mind when I was alone, in the silent evenings toiling away in the workshop between patterns and bastings, when I went to bed or in the gloom of the living room ...”