21 Quotes by Diane Armstrong

Perhaps when you dug down to the core of evil, all you found was a void, an emotional numbness more terrifying than any malevolence. Was the demarcation line between decent people and bloodthirsty brutes so faint that it was possible to step over it without even feeling a twinge of conscience?

You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do a lot about the width and depth of it.

Life is made up of small decisions which, like brick upon brick, imperceptibly shape the structure of our existence.

The best gift that parents can give their children is their own life fully lived, and that’s the gift my father gave me.

When we came to the dirt path that led to a barn.

I saw her a few days before – ’ He stopped mid-sentence and looked out of the window. He hadn’t returned in time to hear what his mother had wanted to tell him. Halina sensed that the conversation was over and wondered what lay beneath the pained look on his face. The death of a mother always left children with regrets but she had imagined it would be different for a priest.

As long as she was there, I was still the younger generation, but now that the last custodian of my past has gone, I’m in the front line.

The most useful form of DNA is mitrochondrial DNA which is passed without any changes from mothers to children, generation after generation. That’s how they identified the remains of Tsar Nicolas, by comparing his mtDNA with that of the Duke of Edinburgh who was related through the Tsar’s mother.

Every human heart keeps a record of its own deeds.