“... I am with fire between my teeth and still nothing but my blank page.”

“The women say that they could not eat hare veal or fowl, they say that they could not eat animals, but man, yes, they may. He says to them throwing his head back with pride, poor wretches of women, if you eat him who will go to work in the fields, who will produce food consumer goods, who will make the aeroplanes, who will pilot them, who will provide the spermatozoa, who will write the books, who in fact will govern? Then the women laugh, baring their teeth to the fullest extent.”

“Despite all the evils they wished to crush me with/I remain as steady as the three-legged cauldron.”

“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.”

“It is quite possible for a work of literature to operate as a war machine upon its epoch.”

“I am forced to admit that I am, to them, nothing but a series of destinations with no meaningful expanses in between. ”

“That’s God,” he said. “He goes by many names, many faces, but God is simply that—love. I find God in this church, in the faces of my parishioners. One man may find it in nature, in the majesty of a tree or a river,” he said and then looked directly at Simon. “Or another man may find it in a woman’s smile. Wherever it’s to be found, it’s to be cherished. When you find it, you hold onto it and nothing, no force, no evil can take it from you. It’s yours forever. And that, my dear, is something very powerful.”