“She always imagined that evil played out on a large canvas- wars, concentration camps, gas chambers, the partitioning of nations. Now she realized that evil had a domestic side, and its very banality protected it from exposure.”

“In the end, of the one thousand fifty-six who had left, in a body, from the Tiburtina station, a total of fifteen came back alive. And of those dead, the luckiest were surely the first eight hundred and fifty. The gas chamber is the only seat of charity, in a concentration camp.”

“She dreamed of leaving, but she had too little exposure to the world to imagine where to go.”

“Emotion constricted Hawke’s throat. He suddenly understood why the victims of concentration camps had walked quietly to the gas chambers. In the face of horror and insanity, it was the one human thing to do. Not the noble thing, not the heroic thing—the human thing. To live succumbing to the insanity, was the ultimate loss of pride.”

“It's hard to find evil in this world,' said the Witch. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow.”

“She said there was no more good or evil in this world than we imagine there to be, either out of greed or out of innocence. Or sometimes madness.”