“I wanted to eat her pain, take it into me and make it my own.”

“A pain exploded up high in her chest and spit her out of this terrible world.”

“She's growing up," Sister Evangeline said.And I wanted to tell her no, I'm not. Everything is exactly the same.”

“I believe, in my better moments, that there is a plan and things go not the way we want them to but the way they should.”

“Perhaps you are right. In another setting it would be ridiculous, too grand. In another setting it would not happen because you are a famous woman and at best I would shake your famous hand for one second while you stepped into your car after a performance. But in this place I hear you sing every day. In this place I watch you eat your dinner, and what I feel in my heart is love. There is no point in not telling you that. These people who detain us so pleasantly may decide to shoot us after all. It is a possibility. And if that is the case, then why should I carry this love with me to the other world? Why not give to you what is yours?”

“He was so close to her then that they owned every molecule of air in the tiny room and the air grew heavy with their desire and worked to move them together.”

“Shy Carmen, always hanging back from the others, who knew she could smile? But at the sight of that smile he would have promised her anything. He was just barely awake. Or maybe he was not awake at all. Had he wanted her and not known it? Had he wanted her so much that he dreamed she was lying beside him now? The things our minds keep from us, Gen thought. The secrets we keep even from ourselves.”