I get a chance to observe the moon now, I still see those same images I saw when I was six, and it pleases me to know that that part of my childhood is still embedded in me.

When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.

I was still hesitant to let myself let go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness.

How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?

My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed.

My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen.

We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness. That will be our strength. That has always been our strength.