"I was still alive, and in my book, where there's life, there's hope." Chapter One, p. 7.

"It was all very exciting. To think that this man, Adolf Hitler, who was going to save us all from the accursed English, was going to be our new headmaster!" Chapter Two, p. 33

"It was all very complicated, beautiful ladies with skin like honey who were not as good as us and black men who were white men underneath and were as good as us. The world was a complicated place where people were concerned." Chapter Five, p. 87

"Even then I instinctively understood that the blithe spirit was rare among humans and that, for the period of an evening and a day, I had been with a part of the human condition at its best." Chapter Seven, p. 128

"'I love wild animals'" Chapter Ten, p. 213

"The warder unwittingly depends on the old...