“Better a coward for a minute than dead for the rest of your life.” Chapter 27, page 304

“It is by force…that we will be free. The sooner we arm ourselves with our courage and with our rifles, the sooner our liberation from slavery will make us equal…it is because I cannot bear to be a slave that I joined the FLQ.” Ch 24 p. 226

“If we all saw the world through the eyes of a child, we‘d learn to be better people. The world makes us bitter. Adulthood turns us sour. We all abuse the things in life that could make us good cos we see so much bad in the world. In ourselves. The innocence behind the eyes of sleepin‘ children is how we break the cycle.” p. 260-261

“Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn‘t know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land who caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”

“We had no more clothing than goats, and nakedness marked us as captives wherever we went. But our captors were also marked by what they lacked: light in their eyes. Never have I met a person doing terrible things who would meet my own eyes peacefully. To gaze into another person‘s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own.”
Book 1, Chapter 3