“She talks in her most sedate voice, attempting to alleviate out fears, soothe our anxiety. She knows that if we are to survive watching this war from a distance, as spectators, we do not have the privilege of indignation or anxiety.”

“It was something I learned then. That you could take the crumpled remains of something destroyed and smooth them into newness. You could pretend certain things weren't happening even if you had seen or felt them. Everything done can be denied.”

“Then too, motherhood is broken because in this place, to be a good mother is to give yourself completely. It is to erase yourself. This is what I refused to do.”

“On a fulcrum in my chest, grief and relief are balanced in equal measure.”

“Leaving is an act that cannot be undone.”

“They say that family is the place of safety. But sometimes this is the greatest lie; family is not sanctuary, it is not safety and succour. For some of us, it is the secret wound. Sooner or later we pay for the woundings of our ancestors.”

“The campus spreads around him like the verdant pleasure garden of an ancient king. He is enraptured by the enormous trees that lift branches like cathedral roofs overhead, shoot roots like polished ballroom floors underfoot. In the hot afternoons he leaves the crowded rooms to study under the protection of these spreading giants.”

“This is the beginning of what we will come to call the Upstairs-Downstairs, Linga-Singha wars.”

“There is a certain new ferocity in her eyes now. A certain new thing that was not there before. I recognize it as scar tissue. When a bone breaks, it heals stronger in the cracks. I realize this is what is happening to her heart.”

“Those less fortunate eat dried fish while the truly destitute fight with the spiny shells of crabs or lobsters. Decades later, my father will find it incomprehensible that Americans crave what in his childhood was considered repugnant fare.”

“We play hide-and-seek, wade into her ponds to fill jam jars with writhing tadpoles, and cavort with her pack of dogs, named Brandy, Whiskey, Lager, so that just calling the pack makes one feel light-headed and drunk.”