Everyone calls you ‘Pasture.’ Do you raise cows or sheep?They call me ‘Pastor’ because I’m like a shepherd for people, and I lead them to safe pasture in God’s good earth.

For her, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon was much more than an out-of-the-way French college. It was a secret mountain, the last place in Europe where people could carry on as people — the last place human beings could live together in harmony.

A long, dark shadow was stretching over the valley: the shadow of death and fear, darkness and hatred, which bided its time for the chance to overtake each home, field, and byway until it devoured the last ray of hope in the hearts of the women and men of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

The town embodied the reality that people could always find a way out, and the impact of one good deed was infinitely more powerful than that of evil.

We live in a world in which men have become wolves for other men.

Life’s not worth living if you don’t give it to others.

He was the last witness of the world that was going extinct, never to be seen again.

Adults were always judging one another based on appearance, religion, skin color, or wealth. Children were not like that. For them, everyone was equal, and they hardly noticed differences between peers.

I can’t live there, but I don’t know what I’d do if Buenos Aires didn’t exist. Chaotic, dehumanizing, dirty, anarchic — but she is my mistress, my lover.