Then you must say to her, 'Madame, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you.

It was not the brutality of what occurred next that changed my mind and brought home to me the full meaning of fear. It was the brilliance of it.

It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.

...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.

Today I will go to wait for her again, because I cannot help it, because my whole being seems now to be bound up in the being of one so different from myself and yet so exquisitely familiar that I can scarely understand what has happened.

For the first time, I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.

It was strange, I reflected.. that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one's life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.