Anne Holm

All suffering has an end, David, if only you wait long enough. Sorrow has its life like people. Sorrow is born and lives and dies. And when it's dead and gone, someone's left behind to remember it. Exactly like people.

For a moment David was tempted to think that perhaps there were no good people at all outside concentration camps, but then he reminded himself of the sailor and Angelo and the English people who might have been ignorant but were certainly not bad.

Johannes had once said that violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easer to use your hands to strike a blow than to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to the problem.

There's always something when you're at fault, too, and that fault you must discover and learn to recognize and take the consequences of it.

But Johannes had said, "Politeness is something you owe other people, because when you show a little courtesy, everything becomes easier and better. But first and foremost, it's something you owe yourself. You are David.

I wrote "David" because it seemed to me that children, who can love a book more passionately than any grown person, got such a lot of harmless entertainment and not enough real, valuable literature.

God of the green pastures and the still waters, please don't help me. I want to do it by myself so that You'll know I've found something I can do for You ... I am David. Amen.

Yes, he had made a good choice after all when he had chosen the God of the green pasture and the still waters! He was very powerful, and the fact that He expected you to think for yourself and do something in return for His help did not matter, as long as you could work things out.

Before he had come to the town he had known about nothing but death: here he had learnt to live, to decide things for himself; he had learnt what it felt like to wash in clean water in the sunshine until he was clean himself, and what it felt like to satisfy his hunger with food that tasted good; he had learnt the sound of laughter that was free from cruelty; he had learnt the meaning of beauty

Angelo was a grown man, and here was one thing he was quite free to decide for himself, and yet he was ready to let others make up his mind for him...that could only be stupidity.

Being brave meant that though you might be frightened, you would face the greatest danger if you knew it was the right thing to do.

Never let me hear you say it's someone else's fault. It often is, but you must never shirk your own responsibility ... You can't change others, but you can do something about a fault in yourself.

Joy passed, but happiness never completely disappeared; a touch of it would always remain to remind one it had been there. It was happiness that made one smile, then.

Violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easier to use your hands to strike a blow then to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to a problem.

Violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easier to use your hands to strike a blow than use your brain to find a logical and just solution to a problem.

You could not bribe honest people, but bad people would accept bribery.

And his eyes frighten me, too. They're the eyes of an old man, an old man who's seen so much in life that he no longer cares to go on living. They're not even desperate... just quiet and expectant, and very, very lonely, as if he were quite alone of his own free choice.