1
There are two ways to answer an injustice: alone, or with a family. The solitary man spends years rehearsing his revenge. The other only has to come to a wedding and ask.
2
The sentimental heart has always dreamed of a family: a father who protects, a mother who prays, sons who obey. Here is that dream, fulfilled. It only needed a few corpses, and readers willing not to count them.
3
Two tears. The first: an old man dies among his tomatoes, playing with his grandson. The second: how beautiful to be moved, together with millions, by a family that loves its own. Between the two tears, men are lowered into the water.
4
It is the most optimistic book I know. Every debt is paid. Every revenge arrives on time, at the right address, while the avenger still remembers why. Anyone who has lived a little knows how rarely this happens.
5
Nothing here is light. A young man comes home from the war wanting to be weightless. In exile he loves a girl he never learns to see; later he will not remember her face, only what she cost. He ends up carrying everything.
6
History, which elsewhere loves to make fools of serious people, has been asked to wait outside. No one here is ruined by a careless sentence. No one here says one.
7
I read the whole book waiting for someone to laugh. No one does. Tears like these cannot survive a single laugh.
