"What I held in my right hand never got revealed to my left. I had already been trained in cautiousness." Page 12.

"If I had to invent one photograph of myself from childhood, it would be of a barefoot boy in shorts and a cotton shirt, with a couple of friends from the village, running along the mildewed wall that separated the house and garden in Boralesgamuwa from the traffic on the High Level Road." Page 27.

"But he had a serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live. And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armor of books close by." Page 59.

"What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power." Page 75.

"So we can to understand that small and important thing, that our lives could be large with interesting strangers...