“When we stopped to eat in the midday, she spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time.”

“She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time”

“Her green eyes shone when i asked questions and she gave me the siren smile each time i clued in. That smile only made me want to learn more.”

“Once when we stopped to rest, she dug her toes into the earth at the edge of a field and smiled. When I saw her smile, I felt strong enough to carry on..”

“When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.”

“When his eyes rested on her, he stopped. He’d been smiling before, in a friendly fashion. But what lit his face when he saw her was more than a smile, more than a grin. It was as if someone had thrown aside the curtains of a sickroom on a glorious morning, to let sunlight spill into every darkened corner.”