If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?

I had three choices: to conform to my own beliefs, which meant death; complete silence, which meant another kind of death; to pay a tribute, a bribe. I chose the third solution by writing The Long Winter.

A mountaineer’s house, before being his home and the home of his family, is the home of God and of guests.

It was only a phrase that went from mouth to mouth and was never quite swallowed.

And everything would be different, different.

Shiny musical instruments wailed, their mouths open like lilies.

An Albanian’s house is the dwelling of God and the guest.’ Of God and the guest, you see. So before it is the house of its master, it is the house of one’s guest. The guest, in an Albanian’s life, represents the supreme ethical category, more important than blood relations. One may pardon the man who spills the blood of one’s father or of one’s son, but never the blood of a guest.