If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.

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

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

I was filled with angst in college, that I struggled with the question of my future, the meaning of my life - spoiled sheltered rich girl collides with great books and is devastated by her own banality.

The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.

It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.

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.