“What I have been trying so hard to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had.”
“Michiel, though, had secretly decided that war was a very exciting business, and he hoped it would go on for a long time. He changed his mind soon enough. In fact, his first doubts came after only five days.”
“There were so many giants and tigers and scary and exciting things before, that I am pretty tired now. That is just a moth, and he is only doing his job, the same as the wind. His job is bumping and thumping and my job is to sleep.”
“So there was always exciting work for tugboats to do. They pushed the big ships into the docks to be unloaded. They towed the ships down the river to the wide, deep ocean.”
“Exploring places and inventing things can be very exciting indeed, but it is only very seldom that, in your explorations, you discover a really rare butterfly or animal or insect or mineral or plant that people will pay money to see, and practically never that you discover real treasure...”
Then Andres meets an American journalist who provides him with evidence that will be ‘more valuable than bullets’ against the oppressive military regime.
“The master used to tell stories long into the night. When he began to tell them, the maid would light the fire. The maid knew all the stories and would stoke up the fire as the story began to build. When it became monotonous, she would let the fire die down and, at moments of excitement, she would put on more wood until the story ended and she allowed the fire to go out.”
“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it — or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don’t suppose many people try to do it.”