“You are the heroes. You are the heroes everyday.”

“People should never think that you have to be a very special person to help those who need you.”

“We did our duty as human beings: helping people in need.”

“But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.”

“At mealtime a very broad cloth is laid on the trestle table in the solar. to facilitate service, places are set along one side only. On that side the cloth falls to the floor, doubling as a communal napkin...there are several kinds of knives...but no forks.”

“...beggars were permitted to enter great houses and solicit directly from the table, but now they are restricted to the doorstep. ”

“As the baby grows bigger, she [wet nurse] will chew his meat for him.”