“She lifts a bowl of kheer and her thoughts, flittering like dusty sparrows in a brown back alley, turn a sudden kingfisher blue.”

“Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.”

“But supposed she had a sudden urge to see their faces and turned to look at them - what would she see? Probably she would find that their backs were turned to her as well.”

“I lifted my hand and pulled the blue paper cap back a little, until a piece of my red fell out, then I reached my hand back inside the case. I slid my finger under some tubes and into her tiny purple hand. And just like that, like she had known it was me all along, she squeezed it.”

“There was no one color that could paint Lena Duchannes. She was a red sweater and a blue sky, a gray wind and a silver sparrow, a black curl escaping from behind her ear.”

“There was no one color that could paint Lena Duchannes. She was a red sweater and a blue sky, a gray wind and a silver sparrow, a black curl escaping from behind her ear.”