Only peons made excusses for themselves she taught me. Never apologize, never explain.

These people picked you up and played with you and then left you lying in the rain

Wasn't that the way it always was? You didn't know, you couldn't tell, you just let it happen... Perhaps they didn't know themselves. Sometimes the line was very fine.

Do you ever want to go home?' I asked Paul. He brushed an ash from my face. 'It's the century of the displaced person,' he said. 'You can never go home.

One can bear anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.

If this was a sandalwood pyre she would have thrown herself in and this paper she'd become would have caught fire and she and him could sail away like two birds.

I could hear the icy winds of Sweden, but he didn't seem to feel the chill.