“He's nothing fierce or terrible or filled with light. He's like us, sometimes we can't even tell him apart. Sometimes we're the ones who try to save him. He's there to show us who we are. Human beings aren't gods. We makes mistakes.”

“Still, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a mistake for people like us to be tied to a place. If we weren't meant to be ready and willing to wander. If everything we needed was contained in who we were.And what we remember.”

“Everything was red, the air, the sun, whatever I looked at. Except for him. I fell in love with someone who was human. I watched him walk through the hills and come back in the evening when his work was through. I saw things no woman would see: that he knew how to cry, that he was alone. I cast myself at him, like a fool, but he didn't see me. And then one day he noticed I was beautiful and he wanted me. He broke me off and took me with him, in his hands, and I didn't care that I was dying until I actually was.”

“We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could.”

“People in the courtroom let loose with their disgust, cursing us, d--ning us, we who had become less than human. Marranos. Pigs.As for me, I felt something rise in my throat: the horror of the world of men.”

“I loved him even now, as he took a knife to my throat, as I drowned in blood, as I whispered "Cousin, you were wrong. We were born to live.”

“Every man engaged in war tells himself he can alter what has been written, that it is he, not God, who is the maker of destiny, free to change what is meant to be.”