“Januz feels glad to have her in his arms--his wife, who would do anything to protect their son. This is how she presents herself. Like a soldier who would kill for her country. And her country is their son.”

“A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”

“...and killed a trellsow, one of the ones he'd learned to recognize as a smith. And thought of Thorlot, who might be a better blacksmith than her father or brother or dead husband, or more than her son would be, but who would never be anything more than wife, sister, daughter, mother. At least she was honored, he thought, wrenching his axe free of the trellsmith's ribs. He didn't mean Thorlot, and he did not know whether he was angry at his own kind for their blindness or angry at the trolls for making him see how blind they were.”

“And what really struck me was that the woman still meant so much to Grandad after all of those years. She burned in his memory in a way that she never would have if he’d left his wife and sons for her. It got me thinking about how sometimes it’s the people we don’t get to have who stay with us the most.”

“Karou wished she could be the kind of girl who was complete unto herself, comfortable in solitude, serene. But she wasn't. She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and... cancel her. She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.”

“Oh, she loved weddings and longed for the day she would have her own. The day when she would be kissed like that by a man who wouldn’t leave her, a man who would promise to love her, to make it his mission to worship and cherish her for the rest of his life.”