“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.”

“It' her life, and she' in the middle of it.”

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

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

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

“Ana had experienced reactions like Ramon's in the mirrored salons of Sevilla society, in the waxed halls of the Convento de las Buenas Madres, on the streets of Cadiz and San Juan. It was a look that said, "I see you, but I deign not to speak to you." It said, "I see you but I do not share the high opinion you have of yourself." It said, "I see you but you're not who I want to see." It said, "To me, you don't exist.”

“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.”