The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.

For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.

And when I raised myself to look at the man who’d spoken, I had a feeling of leaving my misery behind me there on the stone wall.

I wasn’t thanking him for the coin, or even for the trouble he’d taken in stopping to help me. I was thanking him for... well,for something I’m not sure I can explain even now. For showing me that something besides cruelty could be found in the world, I suppose.