If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.

Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.

What an unreliable thing is time--when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl's hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful colour and your hair. .... But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.

Black money is so much a part of our white economy, a tumour in the centre of the brain - try to remove it and you kill the patient.

...there was another, gorier parturition, when two nations incarnated out of one. A foreigner drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it became a river of blood upon the earth. And the orchards, fields, factories, businesses, all on the wrong side of that line, vanished with a wave of the pale conjuror's wand.

Loss is essential. Loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life.

Walk, first, through the fire, then philosophize.