“Should humans conquer the mountain or should they wish for the mountain to possess them?”

“You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed na...”

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”

“Of one thing, though, she was sure: "I want to travel," she confessed.Books were making her restless. She was beginning to read, faster, more, until she was inside the narrative and the narrative i...”

“When you build on lies, you build strong and solid. It was the truth that undid you.”

“His lines had been honed over centuries, passed down through generations, for poor people needed certain lines; the script was always the same, and they had no option but to beg for mercy.”

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”