“She says it is a school for bluestockings which, according to her, is really only a fashionable way of saying it is a school for ugly girls who cannot find suitable husbands. To tease her, for I believe it is one of his greatest pleasures in this life, my father bought a pair of blue silk stockings for me the day we received my letter of acceptance. That evening and the next, father and I dined alone.”

“The best musicians know this music isn't about "schools" at all. Like my father says, "There's only one school, the school of 'Can you play?”

“Inside the room it was dark now, the florescent light behind my father flickering so slightly it lit only the most obvious masses in the room. My sister was in a chair pulled up alongside the bed, her head resting on the side of it with her hand extended out to touch my father. My father, deep under, was lying on his back. My mother could not know that I was there with them, that here were the four of us, so changed now from the days when she tucked Lindsey and me into bed and went to make love to her husband, our father. Now she saw the pieces. She saw that my sister and father, together, had become a piece. She was glad of it.I had played a hide-and-seek game of love with my mother as I grew up, courting her attention and approval in a way that I had never had to with my father. I didn't have to play hide-and-seek anymore. As she stood in the darkened room and watched my sister and father, I knew one of the things that heaven meant. I had a choice, and it was not to divide my family in my heart.~pg 154; Susie's family and heaven”

“I told her about my life, I read into her ear the first drafts of my Sunday columns in which, without my saying so, she and she alone was present.”

“I don't understand why some kids git a good school and mother and father and some don't. But Rita say forgit the WHY ME shit and git on to what's next.”

“How as a young girl, Ismat Chugtai convinced her father to excuse her from learning how to cook, and give her instead the opportunity to go to school and get an education:“Women cook food Ismat. When you go to your in-laws what will you feed them?” he asked gently after the crisis was explained to him.“If my husband is poor, then we will make khichdi and eat it and if he is rich, we will hire a cook,” I answered.My father realised his daughter was a terror and that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.”