“It shook me as nothing had shaken me before. I had heard about earthquakes that engulfed thousands, about streams of burning lava that buried villages, about oceans that swallowed up islands. I had read of one million people drowned by the Yellow River, of two million drowned by the Yangtse. I knew that a million soldiers died at Verdun. But these were mere abstractions — numbers, statistics, information. One couldn't suffer for a million. But these three children I knew, I had seen with my own eyes — this was altogether different.”
Book:Reunion