“Minnesota! It smelled like raspberries and sunlight and tender grass. It was summer, and everything was more beautiful than any picture she had carried with her.”

“Like her mother and all her mother's people before her, those inexhaustible blondes who staked their claims in verdant prairies, Marina was cut from Minnesota, the soil and the starry night. Instead of growing up inquisitive and restless, she had developed a profound desire to stay, as if her center of gravity was so low it connected her directly to this particular patch of earth.”

“No one could see her objectively anyway. Even those who saw her for the first time, before she had opened her mouth to sing. Found her radiant, as if her talent could not be contained in her voice and so poured like light though her skin. Then all that could be seen was the weight and the gloss of her hair and the pale pink of her cheeks and her beautiful hands.”

“Home, bed, sleep, mother--who knew more beautiful words than these?”

“To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall .... [p.218 ff.]”

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

“Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone.”