Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness

... "You may not see the ocean, but right now we are in the middle of the ocean, and we have to keep swimming.

In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

I do believe in God. I think God has given so much power to people, and intelligence, and said, 'Well, you are on your own. Maybe I'm tired, I need a nap. You are mature. Why don't you look after yourselves?' And I think He's been sleeping too much.

So many people, he thought, don't listen to the content of what you say but only to the noises you make.

He sniffed, and said as others had before him and others no doubt would again, "I have learned never to say, 'Never again.

He would come to feel that history, even more than memory, distorts the present of the past by focusing on big events and making one forget that most people living in the present are otherwise preoccupied, that for them omens often don't exist.

One shouldn't expect anyone to be complete at any given moment.

I stared at the faces of the dead students. “You know, Zacharie, just looking at them, I can’t tell you which ones were Tutsis, which Hutus.” “Exactly!” said Deo in a loud whisper. Evidently, one was supposed to whisper here. “And neither could the killers!” “The killers couldn’t see the difference, too,” whispered Zacharie. “So they ask. Because they can’t tell. We are the same people.

When too much is too much or too bad is too bad, we laugh as if it was too good.