"Rundell spent her formative years in wild spaces. At age 7, she moved to Zimbabwe, where her mother had family and her father worked as a diplomat, paying the young Rundell 50 pence for every poem she memorized (and extra if it came from the Renaissance)."

"I come from a family of pilots. Both my grandfathers flew s in the Second World War, and my uncle can fly a plane. And, so, about five years ago, I started learning for the huge pleasure of being above the world and being given a vision of the sweep of it."

"There won’t be any revolution in America," said Isadore. Nikitin agreed. "The people are all too clean. They spend all their time changing their shirts and washing themselves. You can’t feel fierce and revolutionary in a bathroom."

"London's a dull town," said Magnus, ... "It's easy to live in," he said, "but the air's flat and stale and the people half-hearted. There's nothing to do there. You can make love without trouble or meaning, or get mildly drunk, or extract second-hand emotions from the cinema, or put your mind to sleep on a dance-floor, or play bridge, or throw yourself in front of a train on the Underground. There are forty ways of escaping from consciousness. But I want something more exciting than that."

"I find it difficult to recognize people. Human beings are so much alike."

"... I think stories of transformations, of wild glories and everyday glories, of magic both real and imaginary, can act like a map. They give us a push toward hope. Real true hope isn't the promise that everything will be all right — but it's a belief that the world has so many strangenesses and possibilities that giving up would be a mistake; that we live in a universe shot through with the unexpected. There's never been a single decade in human history when we have not taken ourselves by surprise: we, the ungainly, wonky-toothed human species, have an endless potential for change. I am not an optimist, or a pessimist; I am a possibilityist. The possibilities out there for discovery, for knowledge, for transforming the world, are literally — there are spectacular ideas that we will have in the next ten years that we can't even begin to dream of now."

"My dear little daughter," said he, "you cannot be so glad to come back as my arms and my heart will be to receive you."

"They stopped next at a bookstore. "Oh, what a delicious smell of new books!" said Ellen, as they entered. "Mamma, if it wasn't for one thing, I should say I never was so happy in my life.""

"... the pony was not forgetful, yet ever and anon a touch of his owner's whip came to remind him, and the fellow's little body fairly wriggled from side to side in his efforts to get on. "I wish you wouldn't whip him so!" said Daisy, "he's doing as well as he can." "What do girls know about driving!" was the retort from the small piece of masculine science beside her."

"The family—that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape."

"[E]xtreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery."

"Those who are lost look to the stars to lead them home."

"I remember this star, though. Maybe it’s not even a real memory, but this star makes me feel safe, like my mom and dad are nearby. I used to actually talk to the star, which seems really childish to me now. Still, feeling like my parents are close makes it easier to make big decisions."

"My dad’s friend’s cousin just got sent to America, and he sends back money every month. Everyone there is super rich!”"

"We may be refugees and orphans, but we are not alone. God has given us the gift of love."

"I thought back to what Jeri told me, years ago. None of us ask to be born where we are, or how we are. The challenge of life is to make the most out of what you’ve been given. And despite all of the things I don’t have…I have been given something very important. The love of others is a gift from God, and it shouldn’t be taken for granted."

"For me, the first years are lost."

"From the day whe arrived at her husband's home, no one called her by her name."

"The women are experts at waiting - for husbands, for rain, for unborn children."

"Yet, he knew that he did not understand anything about the place or its people or its problems."

"We are all here and happy today because of one brave, little man –and his dog."

"But now, he could only think of many young children, the sick and the very old people and all animals that were all in serious danger."

"He is just one of the boys of the small village, somewhere between the sea and the lagoon."

"Perhaps there was nothing to envy about them."

"The usual lazy yawn of the sea turned into an angry howl. The coconut leaves flapped and rustled, swaying desperately in the wind."

"The image of the maimed person and of the society around him becomes prosthetic. Replacement, re-establishment of the prior situation, substitution, compensation—all this now becomes possible language."

"He said it all depended on his employer; but what did his employer know about her, or her body or their need for a baby? How could he plan their life without them?"

"A stone’s throw from the sea"

"What good is a boy without a pair of good, strong legs?"

"Things in the country moved at a snail's pace, but they did arrive in the end, and when they did they would crash in fury over people's heads"

"It galled him that anybody should think him inferior."

"We don’t think it is wise to bring that boy of yours out here. It is unlucky enough to have the likes of him in the village. We doubt if the Lagoon Spirit is pleased to have him sitting here as well! We think you must keep him in your compound."

"In one convulsive moment Zenzile died."

"And we do not want passes. They have enslaved our men—and we do not want to carry them."

"If I go to sleep and the fires die down, who knows but wild beasts may come upon us and kill us before we can seize our arms."

"I know something about the monkey tribes, but I cannot say that at this moment I remember any particular habit of which we might avail ourselves."

"Oh no! not at all; perfectly well—never was better in my life,” he said, becoming all at once preternaturally grave."

"The spirit of the copper sun seemed to bleed for them as it glowed bright red against the deepening blue of the great water."

"To sleep at your post! shame on you! Had you been a sentinel in time of war that nod would have cost you your life, supposing you to have been caught in the act."

"We must welcome our guests, then, Amari. We would never judge people simply by how they looked—that would be uncivilized…Let us prepare for a celebration."

"The crowd is eventually separated, the men from the women, and shoved into a large, dark building where Amari can smell “sweat and fear…body wastes and hopelessness”"

"Amari loved the rusty brown dirt of Ziavi. The path, hard-packed from thousands of bare feet that had trod on it for decades, was flanked on both sides by fat, fruit-laden mango trees, the sweet smell of which always seemed to welcome her home."

"Here, educated people use their intelligence to avoid risk, to accumulate power, money, privilege. We call it security. That makes our choices sound less cowardly, not so greedy"

"Changes that seem reasonable, natural and basic," Armah says, "the academic world, far from performing as the rational part of a confused universe, seemed peculiarly denatured in its own right"

"Yet she suspected that in its ten thousand disguises Cinque's Zombi corpse still ruled Africa; that those working to remember the dismembered continent were still fugitives in need of sanctuary from the storm troopers of destruction."

"Others have come searching. Wha t they find they take back to America [...] to sell [...]"

"The present is were we get lost -- if we forget our past and have no vision of the future."

"Send me words of eloquence."

"I am saying this is seed time, far from harvest time."