“I was beginning to understand. My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things; that was why everything had to be perfect.”

“My grandmother was overwhelmed by what was happening to us. She ahd moved back into the past because the here and the now was too terrible. ”

“And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal.”

“She was partial to emeralds; she said they were the single thing that remained constant, always green, always the same...My mother had been right, it was one thing that lasted, the one thing we could depend on. Other than our love for each other, it was all we had right now.”

“I would not begin to understand until I was a very old woman, and even then they would still be a mystery.”

“Like the rabbi with the red circle, she should have said "no" to everything. She should have become a raven. She didn't understand that every word the judge said was a trap, in that every word she said could easily be a stone used to shut her into that trap.”

“He'd already realized that he could not begin to understand the things men did; now he saw women were even harder to figure out. Sometimes it almost seemed as if they were thinking one thing and talking about something else completely, and you didn't know what to believe: the thing they said or the thing they didn't.”