“Gloria Anzaldúa, who revolutionised the Chicana writing of her generation, called the border ‘una herida abierta – an open wound – where the Third World grates against the First and bleeds. And before a scab forms, it haemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two countries merging to form a third country – a border culture.”

“The city is the size of a country, but has been operated like a candy store.”

“Let me welcome you to my first country, my Third World.”

“Not one country in existence today has had the same borders and government for as long as two hundred years. The world will continue changing.”

“The younger generation forms a country of its own.”

“Frank, hunched against a bastard wind knifing in off the Irish Sea, isn’t sure at first where the sound is coming from. It’s barely light and a soft insistent hiss sits below the whining gale, like white-noise feedback at song’s end. He leans a little closer and realises the source is sand rattling against the charred skin stretched tom-tom tight across the dead man’s face.”

“There are only two precious things on earth: the first is love; the second, a long way behind it, is intelligence.”