“For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.”

“The night before I left my mother, I wrote a letter. ”

“In the twenty-one years I lived with my mother, we moved at least twenty times.”

“We came to Macun when I was four, to a rectangle of rippled metal sheets on stilts hovering in the middle of a circle of red dirt.”

“Another train will come. Why rush? Why worry? Why go crazy? Another train will come. And sure enough, another train going my way was pulling into the station. My bad mood evaporated. I entered the car smiling, certain that there would be more missed trains in my life, more closed doors in my face, but there would always be another train rumbling down the tracks in my direction.”

“I learned you pay for your happiness. That's why I don't expect to be happy all the time. I'd rather be surprised by one moment every so often to remind me that joy is possible, even if I have to pay for it later.”

“They have no achievements of their own. They've made nothing, created nothing, worked at nothing. They will leave no trace that they ever existed. They have no legacy except for their names, which they did nothing to earn.”