“I, an old man, have written this fire report. Among other things, it was important to me, as an exercise for old age, to enlarge my knowledge and spirit so I could accompany young men whose lives I might have lived on their way to death. I have climbed where they climbed, and in my time I have fought fire and inquired into its nature. In addition, I have lived to get a better understanding of myself and those close to me, many of them now dead. Perhaps it is not odd, at the end of this tragedy, where nothing much was left of the elite who came from the sky, but courage struggling for oxygen, that I have often found myself thinking of my wife on her brave and lonely way to death.”

“Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions. I lost her thirty years ago [I was a child then]--nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age.She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words [not to mention my features and gestures], I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood which gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more.What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have thanked me--this protest in favour of women and mothers.”

“In the weeks since I had made the decision to leave my father's house, I had grown up. And I had learned that not every battle can be fought by firing an arrow from a bow. But I would have to face whatever new challenges came my way as bravely as I had faced the Huns. I could not wallow in self-pity, thinking about what might have been. I had to do my duty. It was the only way to stay true to myself.”

“They turn the water off, so I live without water,they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,they paint the windows black, so I live without sunshine,they lock my cage, so I live without going anywhere,they take each last tear I have, I live without tears,...they take my heart and rip it open, I live without heart,they take my life and crush it, so I live without a future,they say I am beastly and fiendish, so I have no friends,they stop up each hope, so I have no passage out of hell,they give me pain, so I live with pain,they give me hate, so I live with my hate,they have changed me, and I am not the same man,they give me no shower, so I live with my smell,they separate me from my brothers, so I live without brothers,who understands me when I say this is beautiful?who understands me when I say I have found other freedoms?I cannot fly or make something appear in my hand,I cannot make the heavens open or the earth tremble,I can live with myself, and I am amazed at myself, my love, my beauty,I am taken by my failures, astounded by my fears,I am stubborn and childish,in the midst of this wreckage of life they incurred,I practice being myself,and I have found parts of myself never dreamed of by me,they were goaded out from under rocks in my heartwhen the walls were built higher,when the water was turned off and the windows painted black.I followed these signslike an old tracker and followed the tracks deep into myselffollowed the blood-spotted path,deeper into dangerous regions, and found so many parts of myself,who taught me water is not everything,and gave me new eyes to see through walls,and when they spoke, sunlight came out of their mouths,and I was laughing at me with them,we laughed like children and made pacts to always be loyal,who understands me when I say this is beautiful?”

“I have had to give up so much, so many selves and lives already. I have grown up and out of the rubble of my old lives, of things and people I have cared for....”

“3:12 pm Secretly, I admit, I find many of my classmates annoying. I've often thought to myself, 'Good grief, these people are five-year-olds. Why must I spend my days among them?' But have I ever said such things aloud? No. I have been nothing but generous to them, and kept these thoughts to myself. And how have they repaid me? Have they been grateful or kind? Ho NO!”