For folk in such lands time has almost stood still.

- M. Edith Durham, High Albania

Had we not come, we would not have become stars we are the great wide road

- Azem Shkreli, Blood of the Quill

Now and again a few black birds would swoop out from the fog as from another world, coast low over the plain, and then vanish into thin air like ghosts. Two or three times they thought they could make out the peaks of Bjeshkët e Nemuna, the Accursed Mountains, through the fog.

- Ismail Kadare, The File on H