And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

We must discover security within ourselves.

No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.

What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.