... Nine-year-old boys usually turn ten at some point. It's the nineteen-year-olds who have difficulty turning twenty.

It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you're pretending to be.

There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.

. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.

It occurs to me that even though Zoya and I are both still alive, my life is already over. She will be taken from me soon and there will be no reason for me to continue without her. We are one person, you see. We are GeorgyandZoya.

I can't bear to be on a train without a book", she announced. " It's a form of self-defence in a way" .

...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.